Judge's 'Hunch' on Abandoned Baby Pays Off

She asked man who found infant in subway if he'd like to adopt—and he accepted
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 1, 2013 2:08 PM CST
Judge's 'Hunch' on Abandoned Baby Pays Off
File photo of a New York subway train.   (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Playwright and screenwriter Peter Mercurio recounts a story in the New York Times today that sounds like it could be a work a fiction but is instead the story of how he came to be both married and a dad. It began a dozen years ago when Danny, his partner of three years at the time, found an abandoned baby in the subway and turned it over to authorities. When Danny showed up in family court three months later to give an official account, the judge suddenly asked him whether he'd like to adopt the baby. "The question stunned everyone in the courtroom, everyone except for Danny, who answered, simply, 'Yes," writes Mercurio.

The judge made it happen, quickly, explaining later that she was acting on "a hunch." Flash forward to 2011, when New York legalized gay marriage. That baby, now a grown boy named Kevin, suggested that his dads ask the same judge who arranged for the adoption to marry them. The judge agreed, and Mercurio recalls the improbable reunion. "We weren’t supposed to be there, two men, with a son we had never dreamed of by our side, getting married by a woman who changed and enriched our lives more than she would ever know. But there we were, thanks to a fateful discovery and a judicious hunch." Click for the full piece. (More timeless news stories.)

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