Gay Couple Adopts Baby They Found On NYC Subway; He's Now In College

When 34-year-old social worker Danny Stewart was rushing through a New York City subway station to meet his partner in the summer of 2000, he never expected to find a newborn baby with a still-attached umbilical cord abandoned on the ground.

"So I was exiting, that's when I noticed on the ground was this bundle. And so I just kinda made a note, 'Oh, some little girl left her doll on the ground.' As I was going up, I looked back one more time, and that's when his legs moved," Stewart, now 55, told "NBC Nightly News."

Stewart contacted police using a payphone and told them of the situation. "My heart was racing, I just could not believe there was a baby on the ground," he recalled.

He then called his now-husband, Peter Mercurio, and told him of the baby.

Authorities took the child and gave him the name Daniel Ace Doe, after Stewart, the A/C/E subway line and the baby's anonymity, the BBC reported. News of the Hispanic infant being found on the subway was all over the headlines the next day.

When a search for the baby's parents yielded no results months later, Stewart was invited by the Administration for Children's Services to attend a family court hearing to testify how he had found the child. During the December hearing, the judge asked Stewart if he would like to adopt the infant.

"She says, 'Would you be interested in adopting this baby?' All eyes were on me in the courtroom. And I said, 'Yes, but I don't think it's that easy," Stewart said. But, according to him, the judge smiled, chuckled and said, "Well, it can be."

Despite having no prior plans of starting a family, the couple adopted the baby and named him Kevin, in honor of Mercurio's stillborn sibling.

"Seeing Danny hold him for the first time was really quite powerful," 52-year-old Mercurio said. "We just slathered him with love and affection."

The couple got married when Kevin was 12, and the wedding was reportedly presided by the judge who asked Stewart if he wanted to adopt the baby. Kevin, now 20, is currently in college studying mathematics and computer science.

In September 2020, Mercurio published a book titled, "Our Subway Baby," which recalled the story of their family.

"We think about all those little things that happened that aligned so perfectly," Stewart said. "We need to be reminded of hope, and possibility and love. And this story seems to do that."

According to Mercurio, "There are some nights where I wake up and think, 'Oh, that didn't happen.' And then I'm like, 'Wait, no, we have a kid in college.'"

"I didn't know that this kind of deep love existed until Kevin came into our lives," he said.