18-year-old reunites with the man who found her as a baby
An Illinois high school grad was reunited with the man who saved her 18 years ago when she was abandoned by her birth mother as a baby.
The story starts back in November of 1995, when a woman called into dispatch saying she'd left her newborn baby at Mount Hope Cemetery.
Over his scanner, volunteer firefighter Charlie Heflin heard the call to search for a newborn abandoned in a cemetery.
When the baby wasn't found after searching Mount Hope Cemetery, Heflin says he had a gut feeling he should check a different cemetery nearby.
"He didn't find anything and started walking to his truck, but something told him to check again."
Then, Heflin "heard a little whimper close to a tree."
The tiny baby girl was covered in blood and still had her umbilical cord attached. Heflin told ABC, "I called it in and handed her to the ambulance and that was the last time I saw her."
A writer for Time reports five days later that little girl was adopted by Bonnie and Greg James, who named her Skyler.
By the time Skyler turned five years old, her adoptive mother started searching for Heflin - but this was before social media, and the search was fruitless.
New York Daily News says just a few weeks before Skyler was set to graduate high school, Bonnie James found Heflin on Facebook and invited him to her daughter's graduation.
"I was totally shocked and it's something that I've dreamed of since I was a little kid."
At her party, Heflin gifted Skyler with the fleece he'd wrapped her in when he found her 18 years ago. Skyler plans to attend Concordia University in Chicago, where she'll major in communications this fall.
