Baby in satisfactory condition after being found in yard waste bin

ST. LOUIS -- Wesley Falker was supposed to have gone with his wife to visit a niece's new baby Monday night. Instead, he stayed home to finish mowing the lawn.

He almost left his grass clippings in a pile overnight until morning, but, remembering the forecast called for rain, decided to dump them in the yard waste bin in the alley behind his house.

Falker, 52, said there could be only one reason he went to the alley just before 9 p.m. to prop open the lid of that bin with a stick he found inside. A higher power was ordering his steps to get close enough to hear the whimper of an abandoned newborn boy inside.

Falker, who witnessed the birth of his own two sons more than 20 years ago, said the cry was unmistakable. He called out to his neighbors, 'come here quick,' and asked them to call 911.

Neighbor Rhainon Rhodes, 30, a new mother, ran out to the alley, and when she heard the cries, began to dig frantically into a foot of carefully laid yard waste that covered the baby. Kelly Stockie, 42, who lives across the alley, was just getting into his car when he heard the commotion. His arms outstretched, he received the baby boy with his umbilical cord still intact. He'd been lying on his back, wrapped in a wet and dirty white towel.

"You just never know hour to hour, second to second, what's going to happen in this strange, crazy world we live in," Falker said Tuesday, still numb from his unlikely discovery the night before.

"I feel blessed to have been out there at the right time, the appointed time," he said. "God does all this stuff. You do what you're supposed to do."

The newborn was in good condition in the state's custody at St. Louis Children's Hospital on Tuesday evening.

Children's Hospital medical director Dr. F. Sessions Cole said he couldn't comment on the child's specific treatment, but said physicians try to keep such a child's temperature stable while feeding it baby formula.

Cole said the fact the child was hidden beneath warm, moist yard waste might have helped keep his body temperature stable after he was abandoned.

Police said they were investigating and searching for suspects.

Missouri is one of several states that allow people to relinquish a baby at a hospital, police station or fire station, no questions asked. A campus of multiple medical centers in St. Louis' Central West End neighborhood is less than a mile from where the child was abandoned.

"Certainly, if people were more aware, we could see a lot more babies dropped off appropriately than in Dumpsters," said Margie Batek, licensed clinical social worker at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

It wasn't known how long the child had been in the bin, but if one account bears out, he may have been there the better part of a day.

Sammie Rhodes, Rhainon's mother, said she was awake just after midnight Monday when she overheard a man's voice in the alley, and the sound of a yard waste bin lid slamming, through her bedroom window. Her dog Trouble started barking, but she went back to sleep.

Stockie suspects the baby was in the bin a short time because he was bleeding from the umbilical cord.

Stockie said he and his wife and children were on their patio facing the alley most of the evening. He said they didn't hear suspicious noises, but that the night air was dominated by the sound of Falker's lawnmower and Sammie Rhodes' Motown music selections as she washed her car.

Stockie said the abandonment is "really disturbing" with "so many options out there. ... I don't understand it."

Falker's wife, Ann, called the circumstances "nothing short of a miracle," but "a very sad way for new life to start."

Ann Falker, a clinical nurse specialist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, said she is in the business of saving patients' lives. But this marks the third time her husband -- a building contractor -- has saved the life of a stranger he encountered.

He once spotted a person in diabetic shock in a grassy field off a St. Louis highway exit, and was the first to respond when a car overturned in a Forest Park waterway.

"He's always a good guy," Ann Falker in a sentiment echoed throughout the day by neighbors and friends walking dogs and riding bikes in the historic neighborhood of stately homes.

But Falker could think only of the child.

"That baby has great things in store for us," he said. "The baby is definitely a survivor."