Sunday, Aug. 31, 2008

'Baby in the box' meets with family who found him

MANTECA -- James Face's hands trembled slightly as he quietly read a 40-year-old newspaper clipping about himself and the mother and son who found a newborn in a cardboard box.

Face traced The Modesto Bee article with a shaky right index finger to make note of each word from October 1968, when the story of two abandoned babies discovered on the same day 30 miles apart was front-page news.

Mary Gallegos and her 9-year-old son, Tom Jr., were the ones who discovered Face. He was hours old and covered with ants on a weedy, dusty patch of ground in downtown Manteca.

Saturday, standing in Mary Gallegos' living room, surrounded by his family and hers, Face was overwhelmed that she had kept the yellowed clipping for almost four decades, safely tucked away with her most precious possessions.

The article was folded neatly in the same envelope The Bee staffers sent it in, with a Daniel Boone 6-cent postage stamp on the outside.

"What do you say to this?" Face said. He didn't know how to explain his emotions, so he simply leaned forward and gave Mary Gallegos a tight hug.

"I used to keep it with my photos, but now I keep it in my strongbox," said Gallegos, now 66. "It's where I keep all my important stuff: my marriage license, my birth certificate. The last time I looked at the article was when I signed up for Social Security and I needed my birth certificate."

The Gallegos family always wondered what happened to the baby. But it was more than that. It was a hole in their hearts.

"To us, James was 'the baby in the box' for 40 years," said Mary Gallegos. "Now, we have a name."

They have a lot more than just a name.

"We gained a brother and a sister today," said Tom Gallegos Jr.

Face visited the Gallegos fam- ily in Manteca with Gloria Becerra, a baby girl found in Oakdale the same day Face was discovered. Face and Becerra met in July and believe they are brother and sister -- abandoned at birth for reasons they can only guess at. The feeling of rejection is never far from the surface, though Saturday's reunion was punctuated by plenty of smiles and hugs.

"It's exciting," Becerra said. "We want to hear the details of how he was found. Hopefully, this can provide him some closure."

"It answers a lot of unanswered questions," Face said. "A lot of missing pieces are coming together."

They hope to do the same in a few weeks when they meet with with Evelyn Welch, a neighbor of the late Myrtle Stella, who found Becerra on a country road east of Oakdale.

Back to the beginning

Saturday, the Gallegos family took Face and Becerra to the place where his part of the story began on an October evening almost four decades ago.

The Manteca Department Store where Mary took Tom Jr. shopping for clothes is no longer there. The building now houses Leon Bar and Billiard in the 200 block of West Yosemite Avenue.

There is still an area with dirt and yellow grass that runs along the train tracks.

That's where Tom Jr. remembers finding "the baby in the box." They had just walked out of the store. Before they left, Tom Jr. wandered off to find some cardboard boxes to take home to use as garbage cans.

As Mary waited in the car, Tom Jr. spotted a box sitting in the middle of the dirt patch.

"Just one box, all by itself," he said, pointing to the spot.

He walked over and looked inside. There was a baby, wrapped in a yellow blanket.

"He runs back to the car and says, 'Mom, there's a baby in the box,' " Gallegos said.

Tears welled up in her eyes. She covered her face with her hands before continuing.