Imagine walking up to a public phone booth in the middle of the night and finding a two hour old baby abandoned on the floor. It sounds like a movie plot but it actually happened to Joe Campbell in East London back in 1994 and the unbelievable way this rescue story unfolded twenty two years later will completely melt your heart.
On April 30 1994, Joe was walking to a Forest Gate phone box to call his parents in Guyana. He spotted what looked like a crumpled chip wrapper on the floor. But then the bundle moved. He was shocked to find a tiny newborn girl wearing only a baby grow with her umbilical cord still attached. Joe called for help immediately and stayed by her side.
Police took the baby to Newham General Hospital where staff officially named her April Campbell in honor of her birth month and her rescuer. While London spring nights are usually chilly, Joe noted that morning was unexpectedly warm saying “I take it divine intervention of some sort kept her alive.”
It breaks my heart to know Joe tried to adopt little April but authorities turned him down because he was a single man. He never stopped caring though. He brought gifts cards and money to social services every year until they told him to stop. He went on to have his own children but always reminded them “You have a sister named April and one day we will find her.”
That baby was adopted by another family and raised as Kiran Sheikh. At eight years old she opened her adoption records and read about Joe’s attempts to reach her though social services had withheld his gifts.
In 2016 she launched a public appeal to find him. A coworker saw her baby photo in the Metro newspaper and rushed to show Joe. They reunited within 24 hours.
It is so touching to see how God works things out for good. Joe became the devoted father figure she always needed. On her birthday April legally changed her name back to honor the hero who saved her.
Joe works through constant pain as a bus driver after two total knee replacements. He humbly said “every child born has a right to have love bestowed upon them” and honestly we need more men like him.
To say thank you April secretly raised £20,000 to help her savior finally retire.
It is hard to even think about a helpless newborn baby left all alone on the floor of a public phone booth. We know surviving something like that is nothing short of a miracle. But you see even when her own earthly mother abandoned her, God certainly didn’t.
We serve a God who sees the forgotten and the broken. He orchestrated a lifelong rescue for that helpless baby and placed the exact right person there at the exact right second to save her life. It reminds us of that beautiful promise in Psalm 27:10 where it says “Though my father and mother forsake me the Lord will receive me.”
God used a faithful man like Joe to be His hands and feet that night. And that beautiful bond is still going strong today.
WATCH: Abandoned Baby In A Phone Box Reunited With Her Rescuer 22 Years Later
JOIN THE CONVERSATION