Abandoned Baby Found in Back of Pickup After Bumpy, 20-Mile Evening Commute

An abandoned baby, found by a man in the back of his pickup truck, was in good condition Friday--after a bumpy ride across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and down crowded highways.

Someone apparently left the child in the bed of the truck Thursday while Yu Qian Lau of San Leandro worked in San Francisco’s Mission District, a San Francisco police spokesman said.

Lau didn’t spot the little blue bundle until he had completed his 20-mile commute across the bridge and arrived home around 7 p.m. He said he could easily have missed the baby had he arrived home later.

“The baby is lucky and I’m lucky,” Lau said Thursday. “I’m off work early today. Sometimes I’m off at 8 or 9 o’clock and it’s dark and cold.”

When Lau picked up the bundle, it moved. He called San Leandro police, who took the Latino boy, about 3 days old, to Children’s Hospital in Oakland.

“I wouldn’t want to put regular kids or adults in the back of a pickup truck going that route,” San Leandro Police spokesman Dale Attarian said. “But to put an infant there, you’re just begging for disaster.”

Police dusted the man’s pickup for fingerprints, Attarian said, but it was not yet known if any were found.

Authorities believe that the child was born at a hospital because his umbilical cord had been surgically cut, Attarian said.