TThree days before Christmas 2000, Lieutenant Gene Eyster received a call that a group of college students had found a baby abandoned in a cardboard box in the hallway of an apartment complex in South Bend, USA. from Indiana. Two decades later, the newborn, who joined the South Bend Police Department, was reunited with the officer who saved him.
“He was wrapped in blankets and a flannel shirt,” Eyster, 70, told TODAY.
On the way to the hospital, the agent bought a teddy bear to give the baby “some comfort”.
“I wanted him to know he was loved,” he confessed.
During the investigation, the boy was named ‘Baby Jesus’, as he was born a few days before the Christian celebration. For the agent, the cardboard box represented a manger.
Eyster managed to identify the child’s parents, and the mother was accused of neglect. The baby, in turn, was adopted by another family.
Over the next 23 years, the police never stopped wondering about the child’s whereabouts. Would it be ok? Would he even be alive? The man, who retired in 2019, recently got answers.
When the phone rang, Officer Josh Morgan informed him that he was with Officer Matthew Hegedus-Stewart, once known as ‘Baby Jesus’.
“He said, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but ‘Baby Jesus’ is sitting next to me. He’s my rookie,” Eyster recalled.
Morgan and Hegedus-Stewart put the pieces of the puzzle together when they were called to an incident at the Park Jefferson apartment complex, where ‘Baby Jesus’ was abandoned.
On March 22 of this year, the two men met again. For Eyster, the moment was particularly special as she lost her only son, Nicholas, in January.
“Some of Matt’s mannerisms remind me of my son – he has the same smile, the same laugh, the same dark hair and height. There are so many coincidences. I mean, Matt completes the training and is randomly assigned to the same neighborhood of the apartment complex where he was found. What are the hypotheses? I spoke to several of Matt’s supervisors and they all said the same thing: he’s a kind agent, he’s a good kid. His parents did a great job raising him,” he said.
See the images from the reunion.
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