Three days before Christmas in 2000, Gene Eyster got a call that would stay with him for the rest of his career. Residents at the Park Jefferson Apartments in South Bend, Indiana had found a newborn baby in a cardboard box in a hallway, wrapped in blankets and a flannel shirt. Eyster, then a sergeant in the department’s Major Crimes Unit, responded to the scene, per CBS News. He got the baby to the hospital. Then he went out and bought a teddy bear and brought it back, placing it in the crib. “Just a symbol to let everyone that walked past know that he was cared about,” he told TODAY. The official paperwork called the infant “Baby Boy Doe.” Eyster had his own name for him. “He was born a couple of days before Christmas and placed in a box — and in my mind, that box was a manger. So he became Baby Jesus.” The boy was adopted, the records were sealed, and that was the last Eyster heard of him. He retired in 2019 after 47 years on the force, and the questions never went away. Every time he drove past that apartment complex, he thought about the baby. “I wondered, ‘What did he turn out to be?’ And God forbid, have I ever arrested him? Was he still alive?” In March 2024, his phone rang. It was Officer Josh Morgan, a colleague from the department. Morgan had just responded to a domestic call at Park Jefferson Apartments with his rookie — and the rookie had mentioned something. “I was like, ‘I was abandoned as a baby here,'” Matthew Hegedus-Stewart later recalled. Morgan pulled the report. Eyster’s name was on it. “I’m sitting here 23 years later and the phone rings,” Eyster said. “He goes, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but Baby Jesus is sitting next to me right now. He’s my rookie.'” On March 22, 2024, the two men met for the first time since Hegedus-Stewart was two days old. They sat together and went through the old case file, including photographs of the infant in the hospital that Matthew and his family had never seen. Eyster looked at the young man across from him and said, “You’re a little bit bigger now.” Officer Hegedus-Stewart as a baby. Photo Credit: Ashley O’Chap / South Bend Police Department The coincidences stacked up in a way that made Eyster’s voice go quiet when he listed them. Matthew had been assigned to patrol the same beat as the apartment complex where he was found. His daughter Aspen, now a toddler, was born on the same day he was legally adopted. And Matthew had become a police officer — working for the same department that found him on the worst night of his life. “Full circle moment,” Hegedus-Stewart said. “That hit home.” Officer Hegedus-Stewart (left) with Lt. Eyster. Photo credit: Ashley O’Chap / South Bend Police Department For Eyster, the timing carried a weight Matthew couldn’t have known. Just months before the phone call, Eyster’s only son Nick had died unexpectedly at 36 after accidentally overdosing on pain medication. “The timing couldn’t have been any better,” Eyster said. “It helped to fill a void that I’ve had to deal with.” He had done one small thing — a teddy bear in a hospital crib, 24 years ago. “I see some mannerisms in Matt that remind me of my son,” he said. “He’s got the same grin, the same laugh, the same dark hair and stature.” This article originally appeared earlier this year. The post He found an abandoned newborn in a box and called him “Baby Jesus.” Twenty-four years later, the phone rang with an answer he never expected. appeared first on Upworthy.