Inspired to Found Garden of Angels

I’ve always thought that people who play the lotto are wasting their money. I mean, there are so many worthy causes where that money could be better spent. The Garden of Angels charity that I started in 1996, for instance, which provide abandoned infants who don’t survive with a proper and respectful burial.

For eight years I’d barely kept it going by having car washes, bake sales and other fund-raisers. Even then I couldn’t always cover the expenses.

At any rate, I couldn’t help raising an eyebrow when my husband, Steve, handed me a $20 bill at his office one day last fall and asked me to buy some lottery tickets. Of course I protested. We could put that money toward Garden of Angels.

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“Please, Hon, I have this feeling,” Steve pleaded. Steve didn’t normally play the lotto. I stopped at a convenience store and bought the tickets, then went home and tossed them on the dresser. I didn’t think much of the purchase. Money was pretty tight for us.

Still, I was grateful for all God had given me. Eight years earlier I had been seeking a new direction in my life and praying for guidance. I wanted to help people.

I was considering volunteering at the local hospital. They needed people to rock newborns. The greatest moments of my life were holding each of my three children after their births.

Then one evening I heard a shocking story on the news. A duffel bag had been hurled from a speeding car on the freeway. Inside was a baby boy—a nameless child who had died on impact just hours after birth.

Lord, what kind of society have we become that someone could throw a baby out the window like a cigarette butt. What would happen to that child? Would society discard him the way his parents had?

The next morning I called the police and was eventually connected to a woman named Gilda at the coroner’s office. “We wait to see if anyone claims the body. If no one comes forward, he’ll be cremated and his ashes stored for three years.” Gilda sighed. “After that, he’ll be buried in a mass grave in the county cemetery.”

I couldn’t bear the thought of that baby lying forgotten somewhere, having never known any tenderness. “If no one claims this child, I would like to. He didn’t deserve what happened to him in life. He deserves some dignity in death.”

Gilda told me I’d have to wait until the investigation was completed in 30 days. But two weeks later she told me about another abandoned infant, strangled by its own umbilical cord. “How often does this happen?” I asked Gilda.

“In this county we get about 10 cases a year,” she said. Just in this one county? I agreed to take the second infant as well.

The 30 days ended and Gilda called to say I could claim the babies. “You know, we’ve had a two-year-old girl here for some time whose body washed up on a beach. She’s about to be cremated. I was wonderin … would you care for her too?”

“Can I call you back?” I put the phone down and stood there in the sunlight, my heart pounding. I was alone in the house, yet I felt as if a presence were standing there with me, asking, “Would you care for these children?” I don’t know if I can do this, Lord. It breaks my heart just thinking about these babies. I will need your help.

I called Gilda. “I’ll take them. All of them. And, please, call me if there are more.”

I went to the Desert Lawn cemetery and picked out a set of plots. In August 1996 we buried the first three children at the Garden of Angels. Today there are more than 70 children resting there, both a good and a terrible thing. Good that they are at peace, terrible that they died before having a chance to really live.

I wrap each child in a handmade quilt and place stuffed animals in the casket. But before that, I rock each baby in my arms and pray.

The hardest child for me to lay in the garden was Jacob. On January 1, 2001, California passed a law called Safe Arms for Newborns, which allows a mother to leave a baby up to three days old at designated spots like hospitals or firehouses, without fear of prosecution.

I’d helped get the law on the books, thinking it would mean babies wouldn’t be left to die. I was wrong. Many desperate mothers didn’t know about the law. I stood over Jacob’s grave, grief-stricken, asking God if there would be an end to the sadness.

A few weeks later I received a letter from a woman who had adopted a boy whose mother had left him at a safe haven. He’d been born the same day Jacob was buried. I knew then God was still with the Garden of Angels. I will always trust you, I promised.

Strange sometimes how God works. Remember those lotto tickets? Well, I never did check them. Good thing Steve did. I was shopping when he called. “Honey, our lives are about to change.” The $27 million dollars we won ($9 million after taxes) has changed my life.

The Garden of Angels will continue for years to come—though I pray there is no longer a need for it. We plan to give away college scholarships in honor of each child in the garden. That way their legacies will continue long beyond their too-short lives.

Yes, God has helped me care for these children. But it also feels, in a way, like they have cared for me.

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