A police officer in Argentina is being praised by many the world over for selflessly caring for a baby that isn’t her own. The picture of Officer Celeste Jaqueline Ayala feeding this malnourished baby went viral.
The officer works as a guard at the Sor Maria Ludovica children’s hospital in Buenos Aries. A neglected baby was brought inside. According to staff, the child was smelly and dirty.
The officer immediately asked to hold the child. She then began to nurse him. Marcos Heredia witnessed her compassionate act. He took a photo and posted it on FaceBook. It has since received over 154,000 likes.
“I want to make public this great gesture of love that you had today with that little baby,” read Heredia’s post, loosely translated from Spanish. “Who without knowing you didn’t hesitate and for a moment you fulfilled how if you were her mother. You don’t care about filth and smell … things like that don’t [happen] every day.”
Quiero hacer público este gran gesto de amor que tuviste hoy con ese bebito, que sin conocerlo no dudaste y por un…
Posted by Marcos Heredia on Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Officer Ayala said she didn’t think twice about helping the little one. “I noticed that he was hungry, as he was putting his hand into his mouth, so I asked to hug him and breastfeed him,” she said to Cronica. “It was a sad moment, it broke my soul seeing him like this, society should be sensitive to the issues affecting children, it cannot keep happening.”
The kind officer has garnered loads of praise from total strangers online. She’s even gotten her own Twitter campaign and hashtag.
The Bomberos Voluntarios Berisso fire brigade where she volunteers paid their own tribute to her.
“We want to congratulate the voluntary firefighting cadet Celeste Ayala who yesterday in her job as police officer whilst she was on guard duty at the hospital, breastfed a young child who arrived crying. Actions like these fill us with pride and obligate us to redouble the effort, the work and the solidarity with our community,” the brigade wrote, the Mirror reported.
The Mirror also said the baby was the youngest of six children brought in by a struggling single mother. I hope this mother and all of her children might find the necessary resources to keep them together. If this isn’t possible, I wish for all the children to be as well-cared for and shown as much kindness as this dear baby.