Josh Bolton is the deputy chief of prevention and fire marshal for the city of Nicholasville. He said he’s known of the need for a Safe Haven Baby Box in central Kentucky for a couple of years.
“I've been doing research and it's easy to find there on Safe Haven’s website, they show exactly where every box in the state is located. And there's nothing in the central Kentucky area.”
Safe Haven Baby Box is a nonprofit that’s helped install 161 baby boxes around the country, most of them at police and fire stations – places staffed around the clock. The boxes are indoors, and officials are alerted when a baby is dropped off. If the infant hasn’t been abused, state law protects the parents. The closest Safe Haven Baby Box to Nicholasville is in Simpsonville, about an hour away.
“We're dead center of Central Kentucky, basically. So you know, we can help out a lot of communities just in our spot.”
Bolton said he loves children; he and his wife have two foster children. They had three, until last November.
“We raised him from his prior to the second birthday, it was about a month, or 15 days or so shy of his sixth birthday, and he passed away.”
Dylan had a seizure and died in his sleep. Bolton said Dylan’s death was a “go ahead and get after this” message to make the baby box idea a reality. Fire Department and city officials signed onto the plan, and a fundraising effort is underway to defray some of that expense. But, as Bolton said you can’t put a price on the life of an infant.
“If it saves one life, in like 40 years of having this box just sitting here, you know, it'd be worth every dime spent and the time and effort went into it.”
Bolton says he hopes the baby box is installed at station 4 in the next two to three months – which, in an unintentional tribute, would be close to the anniversary of his boy’s death.
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