Originally published 2021-04-09.
In August 2000, Danny Stewart was heading through a Manhattan subway station on 14th Street to meet his partner, Pete Mercurio, when he noticed something on the floor that he first took for a doll. It was a newborn boy, wrapped in a sweatshirt, with part of his umbilical cord still attached. Stewart called 911. A few months later, a family court judge asked him whether he would like to adopt the baby. He and Mercurio said yes, and the boy, Kevin, grew up as their son.
The pictures above show the two men feeding Kevin as a baby and, years later, standing with him as a young boy. Here is how one chance moment in a station turned into a family, and what the story says about abandoned infants, foster care and adoption.
The night in the station
Stewart, a social worker, has described trying to get other commuters to stop and help, without success. The baby was quiet, then stirred and whimpered when he touched his head. He looked only a day or so old. Stewart stayed with him until police arrived and took the infant into the care of the authorities.
Officials gave the boy a placeholder name: Daniel "ACE" Doe, after the man who found him and the A, C and E trains that run through that part of 14th Street. Nobody came forward as his birth parent.
That night, Mercurio told his partner that he would be linked to this child for the rest of his life. His idea was modest: perhaps they could find out where the baby ended up and send a birthday present each year, so that the boy would one day know that someone had cared about how he began.
A judge's unexpected question
About three months later, Stewart was called to family court to give evidence about how he had found the baby. At the end of his testimony, the judge turned to him and asked: "Would you be interested in adopting this baby?"
Stewart has said the courtroom went quiet. He answered that he would, but that he assumed it could not be that simple. The judge told him it could be. He had never planned to adopt, yet he felt a connection he could not shake, and later summed it up in a phrase that has been quoted many times since: "how can you say no to this gift."
New York was running a short pilot programme at the time that let a judge speed up adoptions in some abandonment cases. Mercurio has said this meant Kevin did not spend years waiting in the system. The couple first became his foster parents, and the adoption was finalised in December 2002.
Two dads, one family
Mercurio had not expected to become a father that year either. He has described the first time he held Kevin as the moment he understood he could be one of the boy's two dads.
When the adoption went through, the couple could not legally marry in New York. That changed with the state's Marriage Equality Act in 2011. Stewart and Mercurio later married, and they have said the ceremony was performed by the same judge who had first raised the idea of adoption.
Kevin grew up knowing the story of how he was found. By 2020 he was studying mathematics and computer science, and in 2021 CNN reported that he was a student at Swarthmore College.
Explaining that origin to him was something the couple thought about carefully. Mercurio told CNN that, when Kevin asked about his birth mother, they would say: "She left you where you could be found by us."
Our Subway Baby: the picture book
In September 2020, Mercurio published Our Subway Baby, a children's picture book illustrated by Leo Espinosa and released by Dial Books. It retells the family's story for young readers, from the moment in the station to the courtroom and home life afterwards. Mercurio has called it a love letter to their son.
The book, and a widely shared BBC interview with the family in 2021, brought the story to a new audience twenty years after it began. For families formed through adoption, and for children with same-sex parents, it can be a gentle way to start conversations with children about how families come together in different ways.
Why babies are abandoned, and what safe-haven laws do
Stories like Kevin's are rare, but newborn abandonment is a real problem, and it often ends far worse. Parents who abandon infants are frequently young, frightened, hiding a pregnancy or facing a crisis with no support.
In the United States, the response has been "safe-haven" laws. Texas passed the first, sometimes called a Baby Moses law, in 1999, after a run of infants were found abandoned, several of them dead. Every state now has some version. These laws allow a parent to hand over an unharmed newborn at designated places, usually hospitals, fire stations or police stations, without facing prosecution for abandonment. The child then becomes a ward of the state and can be placed for adoption.
Age limits and approved locations vary from state to state, so anyone in this situation should check local rules or call a crisis helpline. Leaving a baby in a public place, as happened in Kevin's case, is dangerous, and he was lucky that someone stopped.
If you ever find an abandoned baby
- Call 911 or your local emergency number straight away. Give a precise location.
- Keep the baby warm. Newborns lose heat quickly; hold them against your body or wrap them in clothing.
- Do not try to feed the baby or give water. Leave medical care to paramedics.
- Stay until help arrives, and note what you saw: time, place and anything left with the child. Police and the court may ask you later, just as they asked Stewart.
Most people who report a found baby will never see the child again. Stewart and Mercurio's story is remembered because it went the other way: an act of basic decency, followed by a judge willing to ask an unusual question and two men willing to say yes.
Sources: BBC News interview with the family (2021); CNN (Marianne Garvey), via ABC 17 News; Wikipedia: Our Subway Baby; Wikipedia: Safe-haven law; originally shared via Upworthy.
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