An infant was found abandoned in a cardboard box in Alaska with a heartbreaking note from the desperate mother who said she could not afford to feed her baby.
Alaska State Troopers responded to a report of an abandoned baby found around 2 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, officials confirmed in a statement.
Temperatures at the time were in the single digits with a wind-chill of 12 below, according to the National Weather Service.
The baby was found by Fairbanks resident Roxy Lane, who posted a video on social media of the note and the baby, who was swaddled in blankets and cooing softly.
“Please help me!!!” the note began.
“I was born today on December 31, 2021 (at) 6 a.m. I was born 12 weeks premature. My mom was 28 weeks when she had me. My parents and grandparents don’t have food or money to raise me. They NEVER wanted to do this to me,” the note reads.
“My mom is so sad to do this,” the note continued. “Please take me and find me a LOVING FAMILY. My parents are begging whoever finds me. My name is Teshawn.”
The baby was taken by EMS to a local hospital and was “found to be in good health,” according to state troopers.
Lane wrote in the post that she had found the infant in a cardboard box near a row of mailboxes by her home.
“I’ve been processing my feelings all day and running through all the different scenarios and reasons, with my bf and family, as to why something like this could have happened,” she wrote, suggesting that the parents were young and unaware of Alaska’s Safe Haven Law, by which parents can give up their unwanted children at a local hospital, church or police or fire station.
Lane pleaded with anyone who knew the mother to reach out, as she may be in need of medical attention or “might be in a desperate situation, feeling abandoned herself.”
“Clearly, someone in our community felt so lost and hopeless that they made probably the hardest choice of their lives to leave that innocent life on the side of the road with nothing but some blankets and a name,” she wrote in the post. “But she named him! There’s some love there, even if she made a terrible decision.”
“Today I saved a baby and I’ll probably think about Teshawn for the rest of my life,” Lane wrote.