Six times so far this year, Kerry Silverstrom has tracked stories of abandoned babies like the one she adopted, newborns left at fire stations and hospitals in Los Angeles County by mothers too desperate or sick or broke to keep them.
Just since Memorial Day, three infant girls have been relinquished to the region’s Safe Surrender program, one of the largest in the nation to provide no-questions-asked adoption — and legal amnesty — to women who've run out of other options.
For Silverstrom, the news reports are a haunting reminder of the call she got in April 2006 asking whether she’d take the tiny, dark-haired boy whose mother gave birth in a hospital bathroom — and then left him behind.
“I was crazed and I was shaking,” Silverstrom recalls. “I had 20 minutes to decide. I called my husband and he said, ‘If this is what you want.’ I said ‘OK, we’re in.’ And the social worker said, ‘Congratulations, you have a son.’”
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