Wednesday: Farmer finds baby alongside rural road

ST. AUGUSTA, MINN. -- It was early for Bob Klaverkamp to be getting home Monday, about 4 p.m. and still light out as he reached the gravel intersection a half-mile from his Stearns County dairy farm.

Something in the brush caught his eye.

"I got out of the truck to check it out," he said. "Then I heard a little whimper."

About 7 feet from the road's edge, he found a baby's car seat wedged against the base of an oak tree and covered by a pink blanket. A small duffel bag lay next to the bundle.

"I opened the blanket, and there was a baby inside," Klaverkamp said.

He went to his truck, called 911 on his cell phone, then returned to the baby, gathering her in his arms and taking her into the warm truck.

It was about 40 degrees at the time.

"I touched her fingers, and they weren't cold," he said. "She was holding my finger, a very sweet, very nice little baby. She was very quiet, with once in a while a little whimper.

"I talked to her while I waited for the ambulance to come. 'How are you doing? Are you OK? Yes, you're OK. A good little baby.'

"I told the 911 operator, 'I want to keep her.' "

Authorities are trying to find the parents of the baby girl, or whoever left her along the remote township road about 60 miles from the Twin Cities and not far from Interstate Hwy. 94.

She is white, a little more than 6 pounds and believed to be 3 to 14 days old, Chief Sheriff's Deputy Bruce Bechtold said.

He had no idea how long she was out in the cold, but her body temperature was fine when she was checked out at St. Cloud Hospital.

"She couldn't have been out there long," Bechtold said. "She wasn't hungry. The nurses at the hospital tried to feed her, but she didn't want anything."

The baby was placed with a foster family Tuesday afternoon, Bechtold said.

The duffel bag found with her contained a full bottle, formula and diapers, he said, but there was no note and no identification. "Nothing trying to explain who the parents are, who the baby is," he said.

The area where the baby was left is brushy and tree-lined, and the road is not heavily traveled, neighbors said.

"It wasn't in the best place to leave a baby if you wanted it found," he said, and the bundle would have been difficult to spot as soon as the twilight diminished. "But it wasn't in the worst place to be either."

Bechtold said his office has discussed possible charges with the Stearns County attorney, "but we would have to interview the people first to see what their circumstances were," he said. "We don't want to scare them off with talk of possible charges, but they're going to have to face responsibility."

One possible charge is child endangerment, he said. In addition to the risk of exposure, coyotes and other wild animals roam the area.

Whoever left the baby "could have left it at a hospital without any questions asked" under Minnesota's safe haven law, which allows for a newborn child to be left at a medical facility, he said.

Bechtold said he has been in Stearns County law enforcement for 20 years, and he recalled just one other case of a baby being abandoned in similar fashion.

He said he was shocked at first, "and then you get angry at the people who would do this. The baby had no way to fend for itself."

Photos of the baby were passed around his office, Bechtold said, and "our secretaries have nicknamed her Grace."

Klaverkamp said that he prayed for the baby as he waited for the ambulance. "Then you worry about the mother," he said. "You pray for her, too, and him, the father. Both of them."

After calling 911, he called his wife, Deb, to say he was running late.

"I found a baby," he told her.

"He just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and he did what any human being would do," she said Tuesday. "The way he saw the baby and found it, you want to think it was left so someone would see it. Who knows what the mother's story is?"

'They don't take much'

The Klaverkamps have three children, ages 4 to 8.

"The kids were part of our conversation about the baby," Deb Klaverkamp said. "We've prayed. That's the only response you can make."

She is a part-time social worker at the hospital and volunteers at a crisis birth line.

"When you're in a crisis, often you can't think straight," she said.

It didn't surprise her that her husband said he wanted to keep the baby.

"He's a dad," she said.

"Something like this makes you wish you were a licensed foster care provider, so we could take her in. We always have room for one more baby here. Who doesn't? They don't take much."

Klaverkamp said he made another call after he turned the baby over to authorities.

"Our neighbor found some puppies abandoned by the road a week ago," he said. "I called her and said, 'I've done you one better.' "

Chuck Haga • 612-673-4514 • crhaga@startribune.com