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Merrick Life • Bellmore Life • Freeport-Baldwin Leader • Wantagh-Seaford Citizen

KICK OUT THE JAMS! Bellmore students form the nucleus of Bellmore's own teen band Militia, as it played during the Children for Hope Foundation Awareness Day at the Bellmore Movies last weekend. Associated with the Rock Underground school on Bedford Avenue, band members include Bellmore teens Sean Gaffney, Janice Jiminez, Shannen Gaffney, Casey Getzler and Jen Sinski.

Bellmore’s Rock Underground teamed with The Children of Hope Foundation at the Bellmore Movies last Sunday – all organized by Girl Scout Valentina Viscardi of Girl Scout Troop 2028  – to bring awareness to teens about the foundation, and how it could help them with life-saving decisions as they navigate their late teen and adult years.
   
Several bands played, including Militia, Trone and Spare Change, all of whose members are learning how to play rock n’ roll at the Rock Underground. Underground co-owner Steve Eplan told Bellmore Life the Rock Underground was happy to help spur teens to come out and hear the message the foundation has to say.
   
Mr. Eplan thanked Dr. George Rogu of Bellmore for getting the Underground in touch with the Children of Hope Foundation, so that its band members could perform for teens.
   
Valentina  is working toward her coveted Girl Scout Gold Award, and wanted to do something teen-music related that could also offer a solid message to them. Her goal was simply to make teens aware of the Children of Hope, its reason for being and what it could do for them in the future.
   
“This was very successful,” she said of the show.
   
2856 infants saved
Tim Jaccard, director of the AMT Children of Hope Foundation in Mineola, which has a hotline  number at the Long Island Crisis Center in Bel1more (1-877-796-4673), said the  number of children the foundation has saved from being abandoned by new mothers now stands at 2,856.
   
The foundation sponsors the Baby Safe Haven program, allowing new mothers who don’t know what to do with their just-born infants to take them to a place where the infants will be welcomed and taken care of.
   
New mothers have abandoned their children immediately after giving birth, and the infants often die. Baby Safe Haven is designed to stop abandonment of such infants by allowing mothers to drop the infants off. Mothers can leave without questions being asked, knowing their children will be cared for.
   
Mr. Jaccard has successfully worked to see laws passed in all 50 states that permits a mother to bring a new-born infant into a BabySafe Haven location, and leave the infant without being legally charged with abandonment.
   
Hospitals have become Baby Safe Haven sites, as have Nassau County ambulances.   

Birth instructions over the phone
Mr. Jaccard related his latest quest, telling Bellmore Life the foundation got a call on the LICC hotline from a mother about to give birth, but who wouldn’t reveal her whereabouts. “We got the call around 11:30 p.m. and, because the woman wouldn’t tell us where she was, we helped her deliver her baby, giving instructions over the phone,” he said.
   
After giving birth, but still not revealing where she lived, she said she would call back. Calling back the next day, she said she would give the baby up only to Mr. Jaccard. “At 9:30 a.m. the next day she called to say she wanted to relinquish the baby,” he said.
   
She told Mr. Jaccuard where to meet her, so he got on a plane and met her in a wooded area in Ft. Myers Beach, Florida.
   
“She had other young children with her,” he said of the exchange.
   
Mr. Jaccard will host a couple of fundraisers for the foundation,  the first on May 19, when 80 police officers and firefighters from Nassau, Suffolk and New York City will pair into groups of 10 at Kennedy Airport to compete in a tug-of-war to see which team can pull a jet airliner across a finish line first.
   
On May 22 there will be a 10-mile run in Central Park featuring not only New York City and Nassau police, but officers from London, who will also wear their tall bobby-hats during the run. “This is for the Jack’s Kid of London fundraiser,” said Mr. Jaccard.    

He added that after the run, the Children of Hope Foundation would travel to London to officially open a chapter there.

By Doug Finlay

Doug Finlay is the assistant editor for Bellmore Life newspaper. He is also an award-winning writer for L&M Publications.

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