Bringing a ‘Safe Haven’ to Wisconsin Rapids – September ‘25

Hello world, welcome to WFHR's rapid support.

Probably brought you by Crockett Sceptic for this September 5th, 2025.

Have your host James behind the mic.

We want to send a big shout out to our friends at Wisconsin Ravs Community Media.

Being here again this week, doing double duty, having to put up with me twice to support

people.

But we encourage you to go to YouTube, subscribe to their page, throw into their Wisconsin

Ravs Community Media, keep up to date and all the great things they are doing over there.

And covering topics like we are going to be today with some of the guests that we have.

I'd like you guys to introduce yourself so the audience can put a name to the voice and

we will kind of go down the line here and start with you.

Hi, my name is Linda Casper and I am citizen of Grand Rapids.

Linda, thank you for being here.

Appreciate it.

It's great to meet you.

Hi, I'm Sue Smith and I serve as the Wood County Health Officer and Director of the

Wood County Health Department.

Sue, good to see you again and I know you joined us once a while ago with Lance and I appreciated

the time then and now thanks for being here.

And especially with the topic we are going to dive into today.

Now if you don't mind before we get into that topic, could you tell us a little bit

about your background a little bit while you are here today to talk about this, what we

are going to be getting into the Safe Haven Baby Box issue, and I'll start with you, Lynn.

Hi, I'm here to talk about the Safe Haven Baby Box that we would like to install at one

of the places in Wisconsin Rapids that the Safe Haven law allows us to install it.

So we'd either go into the fire department, the police department, or the hospital.

So I'm just here promoting the Safe Haven Baby Box.

And greatly appreciate that.

You know, whether it is Sue or I who are here in a business sense or any of those other

reasons, we're also citizens and feel a lot of what you're feeling.

But to have that representation means a lot to our audience and to me.

So I really do appreciate the time.

Thank you.

Yep, you're welcome.

And Sue, your incredible background, if you could just go through all of that knob joking.

You do, you have a great, very impressive background.

But you are here, obviously, as a Wood County Health Representative and Human Relate Services

Representative as well, right?

Yep, I serve as the Director of the Health Department.

So, and I'm really here because Linda, as a local resident, had an idea.

And she had the courage to bring that idea forward.

And we know a lot of residents might have our other ideas.

So this is what can happen if a member of our community has a really good idea and they

tell somebody and they tell somebody and we get connected and get the ball rolling.

Thank you, Sue.

I appreciate that.

That's a really strong, good point to bring up in this topic.

I got very focused on the main headline of this.

But that's an important thing to bring up.

We talk about this with a lot of our nonprofits, encourage in particular about what one citizen

can do and how important that is to speak up, to have your voice heard, to be out there

and do these things.

And oftentimes, you find that the community, well, I think that's a really good idea.

And you know, all of a sudden, we have something that our community did not have before.

It's a key part of that, our community, but also this conversation right here.

And Linda, if I'm not prying too much or anything, what made you think that this was something

our community could use?

What sparked this for you?

Well, my husband and I got a thank you letter in the mail from an organization that we

support.

And with the thank you letter came the topic of the baby box.

And in the morning, I get up early and I read for a couple hours and I used that letter

as a bookmark.

And one day, this last spring, I thought, I need to put a real bookmark in this book and

get rid of this letter.

So I thought, I'm going to reread the letter before I recycle it.

I reread it, talked about the baby box and I just thought to myself, this would be a great

idea for Wisconsin Rapids or someplace in the central Wisconsin area.

I need to talk to somebody about this.

So that's how it started.

I appreciate that.

Thank you very much for that.

And while I don't make light of any of the things you mentioned there, it does show us

how simply these things can come into the forefront and be able to be talked about and see

if this is something our community wants and we could use.

And we don't know unless we bring the subject up, appreciate that.

It's another thing to have the thought but to take the initiative to do something with

it.

That really, really commend.

We all have thoughts.

You know, we all have feelings and stuff but you got to put them into action.

And you put that, you're a living example of that.

We really appreciate that.

Yep.

And so then I spoke to Jeff Pence-Gover who is an alderman for Wisconsin Rapids and he

said, I have the perfect person that you need to talk to.

He connected me to Sue and got another alderman involved.

And so we just formed a small team and that's how it all started and that's how easily

it can happen too.

And again, appreciate that breakdown there, Linda.

Thank you for that.

Sue, when you first heard about this, what made you think this is something that would

be good for our community?

Well, Jeff Pence-Gover, he's an alderman.

He also serves on the Wood County Board of Supervisors and so I see him pretty regularly

and he brought it up to me and just along with my own beliefs, I thought this really does

sound like an excellent opportunity.

I recall a sad situation in Wood County around 2019 with the baby being found.

And if this saves one baby, it is so going to be worth the effort.

And the other part is just to have an idea coming from a citizen, it's been really fun

for me to work on this because the President said better ideas than bureaucrats.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Working alongside of Linda and just my belief in the topic and the safe haven law in having

access to the safe haven baby box, that's why I'm here.

If you went to high school in Wisconsin, you know how quickly pregnancies can happen,

young pregnancies, some of these things.

We also know as we get older here that pregnancies can come out of the blue, I remember asking

my father, hey, why did you have me and my brother and sister all five years apart and

he fell down laughing?

He's like, Jimmy, you don't play kids, they just have like it's life.

It's life, it's how it works and life is great.

There's a lot of gray area to life.

And I have to say Sue, I think that for this topic, while I have given it a ton of research

and I've dived into it quite a bit, you really hit on the key part to it to me.

If this helps one family, one person, if this saves one baby, enough reason to me, we can

move on.

You know, I don't know what, you know, we didn't do this before or something like that.

It seems like a no-brainer to me, but I do know that there has been concern about this.

There's been some conversation about it.

I think a lot of that, and I am saying this just talking to listeners, just talking to

people out there.

I have first off, I have not heard a lot of, I don't even want to say push back, I think

it's more of just questions.

Like a lot of things, and I was just talking to Representative Krug about this, a lot

of times I think citizen members have questions and just not the information.

And that's where a lot of that comes from.

So I think concern is a bit of a heavier word that I mean, but it's just where, hey, what

is this?

What does this mean?

You know, certainly worrying about child safety and some of that.

So can we get into some of the details of what a safe haven baby box is, and maybe kind

of answer some of those questions?

Sure.

So a safe haven baby box essentially is a structure that is built into a building.

We are hoping it will go in one of the Wisconsin Rappets Fire Department locations.

So they literally knack a hole in the wall, put the baby box in so you can access it

from the outside, but it is also visible and accessible from inside the building.

So there will be a door on the outside, the door opens up, information will come out

to the person standing there about resources, the local pregnancy resources, a lot of information.

If they are standing there with their baby and they want to take a different route, there's

a lot of information there for them.

And there's also a crisis hotline that's manned by the safe haven baby box company that's

24, 7, 3, 6, 5, so a real person, they can talk to you on the hot, which is noteworthy

in itself, it's a real person, but also just a really good point, thank you for mentioning

that.

Yeah, absolutely.

So if someone does decide I'm going to put my baby in here, there's a bassinet inside,

it's got a mattress on it, it's got a sheet on it, it's a safe place, it's comfortable,

temperature controlled, so they set the baby inside on the bassinet, they close the door,

the door will lock, so nobody else can come along and take the baby from the outside.

There's at least two alarms on the bassinet, there's surveillance, so there's video surveillance

on it as well.

The first alarm is a silent alarm, so that the person isn't standing there, put their

baby and shut the door and then hear this siren going off or something, you know, it gives

some time to walk away.

So the babies in the box, the fire department staff are notified because of the alarm systems

and they retrieve the baby from the box.

At that point, they will do like an assessment of the health of the infant, take him or her

to the hospital for an assessment and then human services will become involved, their child

protection staff that are on call, they will find foster care for the baby in the short

term and then work with Gunderson social services for the adoption process.

It's a very detailed breakdown and a much appreciated one.

I don't, I was waiting for to have a follow-up question to answer everything, well done,

but also it speaks to, and I hesitate to use this word when we're talking about life,

but the simplicity of this, that this is not something that I feel like there is a ton

of gray area to, although it is a gray area subject, where the, again, concerns lack of

better word, that I, when I've talked to community members, they always have, they seem

to all have to do, in fact, yeah, they all have to do with the parent and the parents

and well, where is this, where is that, where is, you know, in follow-up questions about

that and all I can think is, I'm not worried about them, I'm not trying to be mean or

callous here or anything like that, but I'm trying to be very honest about this topic

and my concern and my focus, my focus is on that baby, like the parents have made their

decision, that's, that's, in wherever they go with that and that, that's their business,

that'll get figured out.

Right now, major concern, how's that baby, who is watching on that baby, who is taking

care of that baby, and when I have talked to people about that, I direct them to a lot

of what you were talking about there, Sue, and a lot of the details to that.

When they talk about this idea and this box, they've thought of everything, they have,

they have, this is one of the fortunate things I think of getting one of these boxes, whether

it's later on time, however you want to time and look at it that way, this has been fine-tuned.

This has been done for a while now in many communities and many cities and they've been

able to really hammer this down to the point of, okay, is there anything we haven't thought

of?

Okay, now we have.

You mentioned the alarms and some of those things.

The location is very important to this, of course.

Well, fire department, there's always somebody at the fire department, there's always representation

there.

And when it comes to, for you all, have you heard any concerns about this?

Have you heard any kind of information that would be anything other than supporting of

it?

I've read a little bit of comments on social media and of course, you know, you have both

sides of it.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

I guess people are concerned about, well, what if the baby is abused or what if one

parent is doing this and the other parent doesn't agree with it?

If there's anything illegal going on, abuse or anything like that, then the law is going

to get involved.

So, and I think to comment on what you said, it's mostly questions about, why do we need

this?

Is there a big need for this in central Wisconsin?

And like Sue said, if it saves one life, then it's worth it.

There's 375 boxes across the country, and actually, truthfully, a lot of babies haven't

been surrendered to the box, I think it's less than 70.

But the key there is that when a parent comes up to the box, they are presented with the

crisis number they're presented with information.

So a lot of times these parents are deciding to do a face-to-face surrender instead of leaving

the baby there.

So, and that's, I think, more the hope of the safe haven baby box company is that there

would be a safe surrender with a face-to-face one instead of leaving the baby there.

But if that's their only choice, then they have that option.

I'm not sure if you have or not, you two, I've read a number of different articles about

this in the last month or so, and one of them, there was a person commenting on it that

they had gone to one of these boxes with their child at one in the morning and was in

front of that box for a good half an hour, and then came back with their baby.

And they're still a mother, they're still, you know, raising, I think that she said

her child was six or seven years old at the time of the article now, and everything.

There is that side of this too, that sometimes when faced with that situation, you really

do kind of make, you know what you're made of, you know, and you figure that out and

that.

There's angles on this that I appreciate from community members or you two or anybody

else that have questions or have, hey, what about this, what about that?

That's what we're doing here.

We want to have a discussion.

We, you know, there's, there's no bad questions or anything like that.

But I do feel like most people come back around to this of, this is, again, to put it callously,

this is insurance.

You have car insurance, you have insurance, and hopefully you never have to use it.

We hope this box gets dust on it and it's never gets used.

But you want to, you don't want to be laid on something like this.

You don't want to be two months, two years, 20 years from now being like, oh, I wish

we had had one of these.

And I think that just having this box in Wisconsin Rapids, it's not going to just serve Wisconsin

Rapids.

It's going to serve the greater Central Wisconsin area because anyone could come here

and put a baby in a box.

And why went Wisconsin Rapids want to be looked at as that community?

We care about people, we care about our citizens, we care about life, you know, in general.

So I just think that it, why can't it be us?

One of the key things that we have here, that I know we have hang our hat on in a lot

of different departments and a lot of different ways is our location.

We are literally the center of the state.

I feel like it, we almost should, like not only should, we, we, we, mandatory almost

that we should have one of these.

We're our location where we're almost two hours away from everything in the state.

We had a conversation, they, they host up call every Wednesday.

And there were some ladies on there from Ashland.

And she said, the farthest box was like five or six hours away.

I think Readsburg is the closest one to Wisconsin Rapids.

Most of them are, you know, south and east of us.

So I just think that Central Wisconsin is a great location.

Yeah.

Great stuff for you too.

I did have some other questions, but Sue answered them all.

So I, the interview is a little shorter because of Sue, wait a minute, no, no, no, appreciate

that.

I, I can help teaser you and try to find out a chance to make you guys laugh a little

bit, but I really do appreciate the, the time, the energy, the empathy that has been put

into this topic.

Um, most people that I've heard talking about these are not individuals that you might

think may need this, but they see the, the gray area in our society and are doing something

about it, um, as, uh, just as a citizen, I appreciate it, let alone as a father and

somebody that just, you know, like kids, I, I want to be controversial here and say

something, but, you know, kids, they're great.

They're awesome.

Um, it's a nice thing to be able to cover.

If there are follow up questions, um, and, and Sue, I'll direct this to you, um, is

there, do you mind people reaching out to you with questions?

Do you mind people, uh, asking more about this?

Absolutely.

That's absolutely fine.

I don't mind at all.

How can they do that?

Um, my email is simple su.smith at woodcountywi.gov.

My direct office number is 715-421-8928.

If I don't answer, leave me a message.

I usually call you back within, like, an hour, a couple hours, unless someone vacation

or something like that.

Uh, and, and I, I can back that up.

She does.

She gets back to you right away, everybody.

Uh, Sue, please say hi to the staff for us and everything we appreciate you being

here.

Thanks a lot.

Sure.

And Linda, thank you so much for putting up with me and my questions and hanging out

with us today.

This was really good.

Uh, the work you guys did today is going to go a lot, uh, long farther than we can

really put in the words.

Appreciate you.

Thank you.

Shout out to our friends and Wisconsin Ravs community media being here doing the great

covers that they do over there.

And of course, we appreciate you great listeners out there listening and spreading the word

on this topic and, uh, the, this interview we encourage you to share it with, uh, your

friends and family and pets and strangers and everybody.

Make sure that everybody knows.

And we'll be back with more, uh, rapids report for you coming up at WFHR.