Mikel had a bit of a rough start at life. The newborn was found shivering cold and wrapped in a towel with his umbilical cord still attached to his body. Still, he was lucky that his birth mother did what she could to ensure that he had a chance to experience a better life than she could provide. She placed him in a fire station’s Safe Haven Baby Box, a device that allows people to surrender babies to a safe place anonymously. Mikel was at the right place at the right time. Chris Martinez, a 44-year-old firefighter who worked at the fire station in Belen, New Mexico, was one of the first people to help Mikel. He would eventually become the boy’s father.
Mikel was inside the box with no note. He weighed 5 pounds and was blue from the cold. Still, Chris told Today, “The timing was perfect.” Not only was he there when Mikel was left in the box on February 6, 2024, he and his wife Janae had just received their certification to become foster parents. “I knew the moment I laid eyes on him that I wanted to be his dad,” Chris said. “I was going to protect him.”
Still, Chris had to discuss this life-changing decision of becoming a parent with his wife. He dialed his wife’s number, his hands shaking. “The first thing he said was, ‘I’m crying right now,’” Janae Martinez told Today. The couple had been struggling with infertility for the past 15 years and were ready to become parents. Chris remembers the longing he felt listening to other firefighters talk about their children. “We wanted it so badly,” Janae says. Then Mikel appeared.
But the couple couldn’t just take him home. First, he needed medical attention. Doctors placed him in the neonatal intensive care unit and treated him for pneumonia and hypothermia. Eventually, the state granted Chris and Janae permission to visit Mikel in the hospital. It was there that Janae held him for the first time.
“He was so fragile and I fell in love with him,” she says. “I gave him that first bottle and I just looked in his eyes and it was instant. I knew.” During Mikel’s month-long stay in the NICU, Chris and Janae visited him every day. “That was hard because here we were getting attached and we didn’t even know if we were going to be his foster parents,” Janae says.
They were eventually approved to foster him. Then, on March 10, 2025, they made things official by legally adopting him. Today, Mikel is a thriving 13-month-old who enjoys pulling socks out of drawers, dancing, and asking for besos (kisses). Chris proudly boasts that his boy is about to start walking. In their new lives together, the couple are grateful to Mikel’s birth mother and the sacrifice she made.
“What she did for Mikel was so brave and selfless,” Janae says. “We want her to know that we are going to give Mikel the best life — the life that he deserves. He’s such an amazing kid.”
