Screenwriter Peter Mercurio opens his story, FOUND,  with a scene
from  his wedding to his husband Danny, a social worker, last July,
noting that their son, Kevin, was proudly standing beside his dads as
they tied the knot. But the story began 12 years earlier, writes
Mercurio.

Danny Stewart found the baby boy in a New York City subway station in
August 2000, according to The New York Times. He has described how he
found what he believed to be a doll abandoned on a stairway in a subway
station. However, upon closer inspection he realized it was a living
breathing baby boy.

“Danny called me that day, frantic,” recounts Mercurio.
“‘I found a baby!’ he shouted. ‘I called 911, but I don’t think they
believed me. No one’s coming. I don’t want to leave the baby alone. Get
down here and flag down a police car or something.’ By nature Danny is a
remarkably calm person, so when I felt his heart pounding through the
phone line, I knew I had to run.”

“When I got to the A/C/E subway exit on Eighth Avenue,
Danny was still there, waiting for help to arrive. The baby, who had
been left on the ground in a corner behind the turnstiles, was
light-brown skinned and quiet, probably about a day old, wrapped in an
oversize black sweatshirt.

Later that year, the future of the baby was being discussed in court,
and Stewart was asked to appear to testify about the circumstances of
finding the baby.

However, as proceedings continued the judge suddenly asked, “Would you be interested in adopting this baby?”

Even
though Stewart was put on the spot and had not asked his partner, he
replied in the affirmative to the judge. Later he would tell Mercurio
about what he had agreed to, and his partner was initially furious about
not being consulted about such a decision.

However, the couple
soon realized that this could be their only chance to adopt a baby
together, and they agreed to push forward to adopt the baby boy.

In
an amazing twist, the couple was authorized and given custody of the
child with just 36 hours notice, and they were living together before Christmas that year.

The
couple renamed the boy Kevin – he was initially named “Baby ACE” as he
was found at a subway station connecting the A, C and E lines.

Twelve years later, in 2011, the couple decided to participate in a wedding ceremony after gay marriage
was legalized in New York state. The couple contacted the judge who had
granted them custody of Kevin more than a decade before, asking her to
officiate their wedding – to which she immediately agreed.

Mercurio, a playwright, is now turning their story into a new film called “Found.”

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