NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Fire Station 1 at 2222 North Main officially dedicated the first Safe Haven Baby Box in Kansas on Thursday morning.
"Chris Cooper from the hospital lined up a meeting right away to get us kicked off and what we can do and look at some fundraising opportunities," said Hutchinson Fire Chief Steven Beer. "Within the first few days, we had a donation for $25,000, I think it was, just with one organization, which was huge to get this project going. With that, numerous other meetings have happened, then finally we get to the point where we order the baby box, the Safe Haven Baby Box, it gets delivered here, and we have to install it into our brand new fire station. It would have been nice if we would have known this when we built this thing here a few years ago, but that was obviously not the case."
This is where another local business stepped in to help.
"Wiens Construction donated all their time and labor to install the baby box that you see now in the building," Beer said. "That was a huge cost savings of probably $7,000, $8,000 to do that. We want to thank them for stepping up and helping us, and really too, for the community, our citizens, the emails, the phone calls, the texts, the donations that we received from our community has been priceless too."
Monica Kelsey with Safe Haven Baby Boxes was complimentary of the way the box has been made ready to go.
"Getting to know these guys and working with them, they have crossed every T and that nothing has went outside of them making sure that it was done and done correctly," Kelsey said. "We did just test the box. It went off flawlessly. They've got it down to three minutes. Our protocol is five minutes or less, so they're well within that range and if a baby is surrendered here, this baby is going to be in great hands with these guys."