Cop Rescues Baby Abandoned in a Box - 24 Years Later, He Learns the Truth About The Child

Police Officer Responds to Call About An Abandoned Newborn

It's been more than twenty years but Gene remembers every detail about that night. The date, the time, the outside temperature, even the TV channel he was watching when he received the "unsettling call."

The baby, only known as "Baby Boy Doe" was found at 12:15 am, shivering in a box and swaddled in blankets and a flannel shirt.

"That was one of the strangest calls I think I've ever had: 'We have a found baby in a box,'" Gene, a 47-year veteran of the force, toldCBS News.

Responding officers transported the baby to the hospital and later he was handed over to Child Protective Services. But that wasn't the end for Gene. "Baby Boy Doe" (or rather "Baby Jesus" as Gene liked to call him) had left his mark. Gene even bought him a teddy bear so he would know that someone cared.

As a Sergeant in the Major Crimes Unit, Gene's job was to find the baby's parents. He succeeded. Within days, he identified the parents and pieced together the circumstances. But due to privacy laws, the fate of "Baby Jesus" was kept under wraps.

"You always wonder, what happened?"

Gene Eyster via CBS News

It was a mystery that would take two decades to solve. But finally, after 24 years, Gene found much-needed closure in an incredible full-circle moment.

A Second Phone Call Reveals the Truth

It's been 5 years since Gene worked his last case but that doesn't mean he's forgotten his work. So, when an old friend and fellow officer from the police department called him out of the blue and asked him if he remembered the case of the baby in the box, Gene emphatically responded, "I remember it distinctly!"

"Well, you're not going to believe this," Officer Josh Morgan told Gene.

"He's sitting right next to me, Baby Jesus. He's sitting next to me, he's my rookie!"

Officer Josh Morgan

In an incredible twist of fate, Josh's rookie was Matthew Hegedus-Stewart, aka: the baby in the box. Gene said it was "surreal."

What's even crazier? Is that today, Matt serves the same police department, wears the same uniform AND patrols the same neighborhoods as Gene did for nearly five decades. How's that for serendipity?

According to Today, Josh and Matt put the puzzle together after responding to a domestic situation at the same apartment complex he was found in as a baby. Adopted shortly after he was found, Matt never knew the details of his origin story, other than that his birth mother, overwhelmed and unable to care for him, had left him in a box.

On March 22, Gene and Matt came face to face in an emotional reunion. They spent their time chatting and poring over the case documents, including a dozen photos of Matt, only two days old – photos he, nor his family, had ever seen before.

"It was a blessing," Matt said of meeting the man who helped rescue him. "I've wondered my whole life, who found me? What happened? And more or less it's a kind of closure for Gene, you know, like he said for twenty-something years he's wondered what happened to Baby Jesus. But here we are, we made it."

What made it even more poignant, is that the timing couldn't have been more perfect. Gene recently lost his only child, his 36-year-old son, Nicholas, unexpectedly in January.

"So the timing couldn't have been any better, it helped to fill a void that I've had to deal with," he shared.

Whether you believe in fate or divine intervention, or neither, it seems as though this meeting was truly meant to be.