DCFS to take baby abandoned in Schaumburg

Plans were being made late Tuesday for a newborn baby girl found abandoned at a Schaumburg church Sunday to leave her 48-hour observation at Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village and enter the custody of a foster family through the Department of Children and Family Services.

The foster family likely will be one interested in adoption, DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe said.

In the meantime, both DCFS and Schaumburg police are continuing their investigation of the child’s abandonment.

The newborn was left in the parking lot of Gospel Presbyterian Church at 210 S. Plum Grove early Sunday afternoon, Schaumburg police Sgt. John Nebl said. The healthy 7-pound girl and her teddy bear were wrapped up in a red bath towel stuffed inside a green recyclable grocery bag placed on top of a vehicle.

The state’s Safe Haven law allows healthy newborns to be left at designated locations such as hospitals and police and fire stations with no questions asked, but those guidelines don’t appear to have been followed in this case.

Nevertheless, charges are not a certainty, Nebl said.

For now, investigators are most interested in making sure the girl’s mother is safe, he said.

While abandonments in Illinois are uncommon, there’s a stereotype that the majority of those that do are committed by young mothers in the inner city, Marlowe said. In reality, he said, it is something that cuts across all class, cultural, ethnic and geographical divides.

If there is a common factor to most abandonments is that it involves a mother who feels isolated and fearful of the consequences if her pregnancy is discovered, he said.

The newborn left in Schaumburg is believed to be either partly or wholly of Asian heritage, but Gospel Presbyterian Church Elder Bob Song said he doesn’t believe her mother is directly associated with the small, close-knit Korean congregation. Rather, he thinks the person who left the child most likely saw the church’s full parking lot Sunday and felt assured that the girl would be quickly found.

Anyone with information in this case is asked to call Schaumburg police at (847) 882-3586.