Finding Baby Jessica Again

Glen O’Keefe, now 37, doesn’t like to think what might have happened had he and his best friends, Ray Wightman and Chris Johnson, picked their usual path along a rocky outcrop – the faster route to Johnson’s home on Triangle Mountain, just west of Victoria on Vancouver Island in Canada. They were heading there after school that day – April 14, 1986 – to play street hockey in Johnson’s driveway. There were other lucky twists, too: not stopping at the shops to get a cola, as they usually did; hearing the strange cry ring out when it did.

As it was, the afternoon found the teenage boys walking on the road up the mountain, past the few houses scattered along its steep incline. Tall, dark evergreens towered above the road, and deep ditches alongside churned with icy water, the result of a recent spate of heavy rain added to the usual spring run-off.

It was 3.30pm. The boys were laughing and talking when suddenly they heard a strange, mewling cry coming from the ditch across the road. Crossing to take a look, they found an Adidas gym bag with pink and white stripes, sitting deep in the torrent of water. They clambered down the steep bank and plucked the bag from the water, expecting to find cast-off kittens or puppies inside.

Instead, the boys found a shivering newborn girl. Wrapped in a ratty blanket, wearing a thin nightshirt and a nappy, she was almost blue, her chin and lips shaking from the cold and her crying rage; she was soaking wet. Her umbilical cord was still attached.

The boys couldn’t have been more astounded. While they didn’t know much about babies, they knew this one needed to get warm and dry. Wightman dug through his gym bag and wrapped her in a T-shirt.

“We didn’t know what to do,” says O’Keefe. “I don’t think any of us had really held a baby before.” So the three stood beside the ditch, dumbfounded, three gangly teens taking turns holding the baby to their chests to keep her warm.

“This was before mobile phones,” says O’Keefe, “before, I think, even 911 [emergency call centres] had come to the area. We knew it was no use to keep walking up to Chris’s house, because his mum was working and no-one would be home. We figured we’d have a better chance just staying by the road and flagging down someone.” So they stood there and waited.

A car drove by and the boys caught the driver’s attention, telling her that they had found a baby. The woman then drove off to get help. While they were waiting for assistance to arrive, a van drove by but didn’t stop, the driver not even making eye contact. “I’ve always wondered whether that van had something to do with leaving the baby there,” muses O’Keefe; “whether they were coming back but saw us, so drove on.”

When the police and ambulance came 20 minutes later, the teens were told the infant was probably two or three hours old and had perhaps been in the ditch for an hour or more. They were also told that they had saved her life, that given 10-20 minutes more in the cold water, she probably would have died of exposure or drowned.