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A Few Clouds ‘A champion for the unborn’
A young, frightened woman called Timothy Jaccard, a 66-year-old Wantagh resident, with a slew of questions on Nov. 21. She was pregnant, Jaccard explained, but had had no prenatal care. And she made it clear to him that she could not take care of the child — a baby girl who weighed roughly 4 pounds when she was born three days later, on Thanksgiving.
Jaccard arranged for the baby — whose umbilical cord was still attached at the time — to be dropped off at Wantagh Fire Department headquarters on the holiday. The station is a designated safe haven — a place where, under New York’s Abandoned Infant Protection Act, parents may surrender a newborn up to 30 days old anonymously and without fear of prosecution. Babies brought to these firehouses, police stations and hospitals receive medical attention and care until social service agencies place them in new homes.
The legislation, the safe havens, the crisis hotline that the young woman called last month — none of these would exist if it weren’t for Jaccard, said his former neighbor, Nassau County Legislator Steve Rhoads. Noting that the Thanksgiving newborn, Baby Hope, was just one of 3,299 children that Jaccard’s nonprofit organization, the Ambulance Medical Technicians Children of Hope Foundation, has taken in since he founded the group in 1998, Rhoads said that the impact of his mission has extended far beyond his hometown.
“Who knows what would have happened?” Rhoads said about both the Wantagh baby and the thousands of others that, he said, Jaccard has directly or indirectly saved around the county. “People have different issues, different challenges, different demands on their lives. If we’re going to be a culture that respects and values life, this seems like a perfect way for us to be able to give families an out that protects the child and gets the parents out of what they believe to be a desperate situation that they might not be able to otherwise handle.”
The Herald Citizen is honored to name Jaccard — who has saved and changed thousands of lives — its 2016 Person of the Year.
Jaccard was a paramedic for the Nassau County Police Department for 37 years. Chris Brown, the president of the Wantagh Chamber of Commerce, met him when Brown was working as a paramedic two decades ago. Both are members of the St. Frances De Chantal Roman Catholic Church Knights of Columbus Council. Jaccard’s faith is a critical part of his life, Brown said.
Indeed, Jaccard believes that God sent him a mission to help unwanted newborns in 1997, when he got a call at work about an unresponsive baby that had been found in a restroom in First District Court in Hempstead. Within half an hour, Jaccard said, the infant was dead.
The tragedies began happening like clockwork, Jaccard recalled. Two weeks later, he was called to St Aidan’s Church in Albertson, where he found a baby girl wrapped in a plastic bag, asphyxiated. Two weeks after that, a dog unearthed the body of a child who had been buried in the backyard of a Hempstead home. And two weeks after that, he responded to a crime scene in Lawrence at which a baby had been found dead in a bag.
“I said, ‘I think that God wants me to change this,’” Jaccard said. “Now, I will have a child, alive, in my hands who is going to grow up someday and maybe cure cancer or become the next president.”
Initially, his goal was to bury every infant in Nassau who was abandoned and died, or murdered. To do that, Brown explained, he founded the AMT Children of Hope Foundation — which is headquartered in Wantagh, next to the home Timothy shares with his wife, Aedan — to pay for funeral services.
To bury the babies, Brown explained, Jaccard had to become their legal guardian. Since 1998, exactly 140 of his deceased “children” — all with tombstones inscribed with the surname Hope — have been given a “funeral of a hero” at a large plot that he purchased at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury.
But Jaccard said that he wanted to prevent the funerals from happening, to give desperate women options — whether they had become pregnant via rape or simply could not take care of a child — that would keep them and their babies safe. So he began contacting politicians and drafting legislation that would allow a birth mother to drop off her unwanted newborn at what he called a safe haven.
Then-Gov. George W. Bush of Texas signed such legislation, called the Baby Moses Bill, in 1999. A year later, the Abandoned Infant Protection Act became law in New York. Brown noted that Jaccard’s tireless lobbying resulted in the passage of safe haven laws in all 50 states in less than 20 years.
“He has given these girls peace of mind and a way out,” Brown said of the national safe haven movement. “Women are going to have these problems to deal with, and people don’t always know how to handle it. They’re at the end of their rope. Thank God someone is doing something.”
The safe haven movement continues to expand. In 2012, ambulances became drop-offs, and the following year, All Island Transportation joined the effort by adding safe haven logos to its fleet of cars. Any driver in a vehicle bearing the logo will bring an abandoned infant to a local hospital. Brown said that Jaccard also aims to enlist urgent-care facilities as safe havens.
Jaccard, who is now retired, still works with the Nassau County Police Department, caring for infants and their parents. Acting Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter described Jaccard’s pledge to help mothers and their children as unprecedented.
“Through his selfless dedication and tireless efforts, Tim has established himself as a champion for the unborn,” Krumpter said. “His commitment to the safe haven program has resulted in the saving of thousands of babies and has been a blessing for all those touched by his graciousness.”
James Bloomfield, chief of the Wantagh Fire Department, agreed, adding that Jaccard’s work is inspiring. All Wantagh fire stations are safe havens, and Bloomfield said that local volunteers stand ready to assist the AMT Children of Hope Foundation.
Brown said that Jaccard’s work has brought Wantagh together in many ways. Whether he was teaming up with the John Theissen Children’s foundation or hosting a benefit at Mulcahy’s Pub and Concert Hall, Brown noted that groups like the Kiwanis Club and the chamber are always ready to lend a hand.
Last month, chamber leaders presented Jaccard with their Good Guy of the Year Award. The honor was one of many he has received, joining congratulatory letters from officials ranging from Bush to Queen Elizabeth II.
While he appreciates kind words of encouragement, Jaccard said, he did not take up his mission for praise. The true rewards have been the lasting relationships he has built with mothers and children, and the knowledge that once-abandoned youngsters will continue to grow up in loving adoptive homes.
“I have a child now that’s 17 years old, and when she turns 18, she can seek her biological mother out,” he said. “This has turned over a generation … that is an incredible feeling.”
