Baby Found Abandoned on Front Porch

He looks big for an 8-month-old. Like other babies, he laughs when holding a toy, and he cries when someone takes it away.

Unlike other babies, his name is “Baby Boy Doe.” He is the seventh child to be abandoned in San Diego County in the last nine months.

Authorities don’t have a clue where he came from or who is supposed to care for him.

“He was found Saturday morning crying on the front porch,” said Detective Ron Hall of the San Diego Police Department’s child abuse unit. “He’s about 8 to 9 months old and is good and healthy.”

The baby was found on a doorstep of an East San Diego home, Hall said, near Chamoune Avenue and Wightman Street. He was wearing diapers and a white T-shirt with blue and red trim on the sleeves and neck.

The abandonment most likely was “a desperate act by a very concerned and loving parent,” said Ivory Johnson, deputy director of the County Department of Social Services.

She said the recession, lack of knowledge about resources to help families in distress, or perhaps post-partum depression may have played a role in the abandonment.

Whatever the reason, Johnson said, the family should contact her department.

“We will help them,” she said.

In the last nine months, only one of six other abandoned babies has been reunited with its parents.

In January, police found the mother of a baby girl who was left in a pickup truck in the Plaza Bonita Shopping Center in National City. The mother has been placed on probation and the family is back together, a county spokesperson said. The mother said financial problems, an unstable marriage and postpartum depression led her to abandon her baby.

“The stresses of the economy and people feeling like they cannot provide care are the main factors,” said Lana Willingham, assistant director of the Department of Social Services. “People are overwhelmed.”

The number of parents that feel overwhelmed is likely to increase as an austere state budget cuts back health and welfare services, she said.

“We have a 4.5% reduction in Aid to Families with Dependent Children that will be implemented Oct. 1,” Willingham said. “For a mother and two children, their $663 a month will drop to $630 a month.”

About 61,000 families are on welfare in San Diego County, she said.

Though officials can’t directly tie economic factors with child abandonment, they say they normally have three to four abandonment cases a year.

“ Maybe four,” said Carol Baenziger, a spokeswoman for the social services department. “This is really high, and we’re not even close to the end of the year.”

The other children that have been abandoned in the last nine months are in foster care or are about to be adopted, she said.

“Baby Noel,” who was less than a day old when she was found, is about to be adopted, Baenziger said. The baby was wrapped in plastic and barely breathing in a Dumpster in East San Diego when she was discovered, 10 days before Christmas.

Eric Wilson, 2, was dropped off at a day-care center in National City by his grandmother July 2. She never came to pick him up. He is in a foster home and doing well, Baenziger said.

“Baby Jane Doe” was wearing diapers and a T-shirt when she was found at San Dieguito High School in Encinitas on Aug. 8. She is also in foster care.

“Baby Girl Escondido” was found in a cardboard box at the Super Wash self-serve carwash in Escondido in August. She was less than one hour old and her umbilical cord was still attached. She was released from a hospital less than 24 hours after being saved and is currently in foster care and is healthy, Baenziger said.

Social welfare officials hope that publicity over the latest case will help them find the parents of “Baby Boy Doe” and show parents that there are solutions to even the most complex of problems.

In the meantime, they are looking for the parents of yet another another child who was recently abandoned. Officials would not release any information about the baby at this time.

“The saddest thing is that it’s a matter of time before one of these abandonments ends in tragedy,” Baenziger said. “We will find one of these children when it’s too late.”