Meet Debbe Ann Magnusen | The Baby Saver” Founder & Volunteer CEO of Project Cuddle”

We had the good fortune of connecting with Debbe Ann Magnusen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Debbe Ann, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
Wow! What loaded questions!!! Here I go: (With my ADHD I do better numbering the points that it took me to figure out how to be the first one to actually figure out how to stop girls & women from throwing away their newborn babies and to actually hear them tell me how much they hated the child they held within their body or had just delivered) So, here were the steps.

{FACT #1} I never fit in a box. I had a near death experience at the age of 5. I came out of that experience as an old soul. I looked at life wanting to help others and loved the company of my grandparents, especially my Grandpa Klages who was my best buddy until he passed away when I was 11. He told me that I could do and be anything I wanted to when I grew up. I didn’t have any click or group in school, but was friendly with everyone and just preferred the wisdom of those older than myself, and many were senior citizens.

{FACT #2} At the ripe old age of 8, I became a dental assistant. My father was a dentist in Corona del Mar, and took our family to an orphanage in Mexico. Well, once there, I was immediately told that I was going to help assist my daddy while he pulled the painful and decayed teeth of the orphans. Then…surprise, I was handed a pitcher and told to go pump water and fill the pitcher up and then I held a flashlight and a bowl for the orphans to spit into.
After a full day of “dental assisting”, I was told that we were going to go have dinner with the orphans. We were told to make sure and eat all our raccoon stew as the orphans would only be getting that one bowl with a piece of bread for dinner, and it would make them very sad to see left over food and not be allowed to eat it. I left the orphanage and headed back to my beautiful home in Newport Beach, California and KNEW that someday I wanted to stop babies from being abandoned. I had no idea at that age how I would do it, but I WOULD do it.
I’d be sitting in my parent’s long red station wagon and anytime we were driving on a highway or busy road and would see a cardboard box or large black trash bag on the side of the road, I would wonder if a baby could be in there.
(I know…that’s not a normal thought, that is my truth)

{Fact #3} There was one deciding factor that would determine if I would marry the man of my dreams if I found him. He had to be open to having just 2 “original models” and then foster or adopt. Well, I finally met him and after he proposed, I told him my stipulation, and he said “Yes” and we got married.

{Fact #4} I became deathly ill with my second planned pregnancy. Denial became my safety net. I went into the OB with my 11 month old son, as I had blisters all over my throat that felt like pieces of glass cutting me with each swallow. The doctor looked in my mouth and stated to the nurse, “Strep…send her home with an antibiotic.” That was one BIG mistake on the doctor’s part! I went back for my next prenatal appointment and though my throat was better, I felt very weak and was coughing, but no cold. After the nurse took my blood pressure and heart rate, she left the room and returned with the doctor. He told me that I needed to go directly across the hall to see a Dr. Swaroop. My son and I entered that office, and we were quickly taken into a room. Dr Swaroop came in just as we settled in on the exam table. He then took my heart rate and blood pressure. Then, he told me that I needed to walk across the walkway and go into the E.R. He assured me that they would already have orders for tests they needed and he would be over as soon as he could to check on me.
I barely got all the way onto the gurney with my son, and they whisked us away into a private room, and I never even got changed into a gown, when they slapped oxygen on me after a technician drew arterial blood (from a main artery in my arm.) It hurt SO bad that I wanted to scream. Then a nurse started and IV and drew blood from the other arm and then started some IV medication. After things slowed down a lot, a Social Worker came in and told me that I needed to be admitted and that someone needed to pick up my son. I’d never been separated from him at all, and I was upset that I had to stay and not be with my precious son. FINALLY the cardiologist came in and sat down on the end of my bed to speak with me. He informed me that I had mononucleosis and that I had a heart murmur. My heart was beating between 120 to 220 beats a minute and irregular beats as well. He told me that I was in a very serious situation and was not going to be able to take care of my son and was at high-risk of losing the baby and perhaps my own life. I was now over 4 ½ months pregnant and literally, I mentally had to shut down any thoughts or hopes of having this baby. I cancelled the baby shower and can honestly say that I NEVER felt the baby move. I was admitted two more times to the High-Risk Unit at Long Beach Memorial over the next couple of months. I was told that I was “A walking time bomb and could go into cardiac arrest at any point. I shouldn’t expect the baby to survive, and now that they had to put me on another heart medication as well as the first, IF the baby survived, it could be mentally challenged or blind.” I actually became a case study because of the experimental medications I was taking. No car rides, I was completely bedridden, except for once a day I was allowed to go in my wheelchair with my son in my lap and be pushed around the block. The only thing I could do was to pick a flower along the route, and then I taught him how to smell the flowers…literally.
I couldn’t have this one natural as I had with the first one. I would immediately need to be given an epidural in order to keep my heart rate under control. I didn’t pack a bag for the hospital or even buy newborn diapers. I slept on my belly as I always had the night before the baby was due. I was in denial (I call it Pregnexia…denial of pregnancy which I stated when I was on Oprah the first time in 2000). When I woke up on the day she was due, I was having contractions 2 minutes a part. I thought it was baked beans from the 4th of July, the night before. You see, if you don’t accept you are pregnant, then you can’t be in labor. I couldn’t accept this baby was inside of me because if the baby died…I wouldn’t be able to handle it with my racing heart. It was self protection, just like these girls and women deal with. Whether pregnant by rape, incest, a one night stand, or the “good girl” trying to finish college and please her parents, they deny the pregnancy.
I was amazed when she was born and alive. It took me a bit to get it in my head that she was real and mine. (GREAT TRAINING FOR GIRLS IN DENIAL OF THEIR PREGNANCY)

{Fact #5} Our 5-bedroom home was right under the flight pattern of the John Wayne Airport. Here we were with empty bedrooms and our children were 6 & 7. It seemed a good time to start showing our children how to help others that had no one to love them. We took all the classes and then waited for a call from a Social Worker for a placement. Finally in 1982 we began fostering.

{Fact #6} I got drug-exposed babies instead of abandoned babies. I had heard about these babies, and in fact, I was very scared when the first one arrived at my door. I was thinking, what could happen, could she blow up? I was a nervous reck, but it wasn’t all that bad. After around 7 of these precious little ones, I started to disagreed with everyone that was SO negative about these children’s futures. In the early 1980’s they predicted that they were going to be monsters! They didn’t have 5 heads and 4 noses, I believed that they could be WONDERFUL PEOPLE TOO.

{Fact #7} I was able to write and publish a Training Manual on caring for these precious babies. This was due to the common factors that I found with the 35 that we fostered, as well as the input of other foster parents and some specialist I worked with. I have spoken Nationally as well as Internationally while selling the manual called “Learning to Live and Laugh While Caring for Drug-Exposed Babies. They didn’t choose to use, so they’re not “drug-addicted!”

{Fact #8} I learned a lot about “The System” while fostering and adopting 5 of these WONDERFUL children. I always say, “If the front door is locked, try the side window.” Four of the five we adopted had all taken place before I created the Project Cuddle Crisis Hotline. The final one was a true challenge as Social Services called me “Non-Containable” because I was about to start a hot-line in the corner of my living room. They told us we would have to put new screens on all our windows, and with a 5 bedroom home, that was a lot of expense. They demanded we put a net up on the stair railing to protect the youngest one from sticking his head through it. This was never a concern for any of the 34 other children we had cared for. Why now? Then, the kicker was when I took 2 double decker luxury buses (paid for by Michael Jackson) with 150 abused foster & adopted children and their foster parents up to Neverland. At the hearing prior to being approved to adopt our 5th child, they stated that the baby had been taken up to a “child molester’s home”. Michael was in New York and this little boy was perfectly safe.

{Fact #9} I FINALLY had heard enough and knew what I needed to do to stop girls and women from dumping their babies in back alleys or in a dumpster to slowly die over a couple of days with bugs and rats eating away the flesh.
January 1996, I heard about a newborn baby girl that had been found dead, wrapped in bloody underwear and locked in a file cabinet at Yamaha USA. I questioned why they hadn’t brought it to me. I was well known in the high schools as I would go and speak to the kids about what drugs do not only to them, but the baby they could be carrying now or in the future.
March 1996, I saw on the news that a little boy had been found just one city away from me suffocated in a trash bag. I HAD TO DO SOMETHING! Our home was full, and NOW was the time to figure out how to reach these girls. Then, a commercial came on offering toll-free numbers. THAT WAS IT! I’d go to the Board of Directors for Project Cuddle and ask that we change our mission from providing stuffed toys for children that were brought into protective custody by the police or sheriffs to now create a toll-free number and get the word out there that we could have them call for confidential help. I walked around the house for 2 days just SO excited about this idea and just kept saying, “This is BIG…this is REALLY BIG!” The Board of Directors said they would give me a 6-month trial period, and if we didn’t save any babies by then, we would have to rethink it. Five babies were abandoned, most of them dead within Orange County and Los Angeles County that had been reported as I was getting everything in order. It just pushed me on further to make sure we had our ducks in a row and were ready to take those calls.

{Fact #10} We opened the Crisis Hotline on July 8, 1996, with a press release sent out and we held a little press conference and then had a photo op where the children and foster moms all sang “Happy Birthday” to ALL those babies that would never get to turn one. It was very touching and successful.

{Fact #11} We appeared on Telemundo that first night for the 11 o’clock news. By 11 AM on the following day we had our first crisis case! The young woman had been raped and the baby was going to be half Hispanic and half Black. She was fighting for custody of her first child and couldn’t let anyone know about this pregnancy. She hated the baby and told us that if didn’t help her she was going to deliver on her own and put the baby in the park. Amazingly enough, she was in the same city where that little boy had been found suffocated in the trash bag just months before.

{Fact #12} What I expected was that we would get a call from a girl or woman with the city and state, along with a landmark of where we could get the authorities to pick up the baby. This was MUCH BIGGER than I had ever imagined! Not only did we Rescue the Baby, but we kept the young woman from breaking the law and she was able to keep her first child out of the foster care system, PLUS… she found a family she chose to adopt and Rescue this little girl. We made a family! As I stood next to her on the gurney as she waited for her daughter to arrive, She said to me, “For the first time I have done something that I am proud of.” Wow, that said it all right there.
Please go to YouTube and search: Oprah and John Stamos pull off (I promise it will make you smile.

{Fact #13} 2 weeks later we went National & International! A national day time show called “Day & Date” kept calling me, wanting me to allow them to follow the story I was working on. I finally asked the woman if it would be okay to allow them to follow her and interview her if we hid her face, changed her clothing, jewelry, etc. Much to my surprise she said “Yes, my family won’t see English speaking shows, and if it will help other girls to call you instead of dumping their baby, I will do it.” Wow! Not the answer I expected, but a wonderful on.
We saved hundreds of thousands of dollars that for the government because they didn’t need to spend money and manpower on searching for the Birthmom, expense of caring for the baby if she had survived that night in the gully of the park, or the prosecution of the woman and incarceration expense, as well as the placement of the other child in the foster care system. It was a win-win-win situation!
Other

{Fact #14-The FINALE}
SO, IT ONLY TOOK ME 50 YEARS TO UNLOCK THE TRUTH ABOUT MY PASSION…HOW TO STOP BABIES FROM BEING ABANDONED.
I remembered that something had happened to the left of me while eating raccoon stew in Mexico at the age of 8, but it wasn’t until 50 years later that I would know what had actually happened. While interviewing my sweet mommy for my next book, I asked her “So Mommy, why am I so obsessed with babies being abandoned?” She put her little finger up to her chin as she pondered in thought before answering me. “Well, maybe it had something to do with that dirty homeless man that was looking on the heap of trash for food.” I pushed my hand out and yelled, “Stop…I know the rest!
All of the sudden, I REMEMBERED WHAT HAD HAPPENED! Suddenly everything turned to color. I told my parents “I was sitting at a long child’s sized white wooden table. The bell clanged and all the orphans ran to the door” my parent’s nodded in agreement as I continued to remember what took place. “A lady opened the front door, and the homeless man came in with a filthy, dirty, naked newborn that was screaming and had the umbilical cord hanging down with the placenta hanging down and still attached.” It all took place to the left of me and my mom helped me fill in those blanks! It had been SO traumatic for me that I had it hidden deep in my subconscious. I’m SO very thankful that I learned this before they both passed away, but 50 years was a VERY LONG time to have that suppressed.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I am the Founder & CEO of a charity called Project Cuddle. I actually started doing philanthropic work in 1983 as a Foster Mom to 35 Drug-Exposed Babies. My father saw that I was doing a lot to not only help care for drug-exposed babies as well as providing extra food for the Foster Families, but I created Project Cuddle in 1988 because of a foster child that was in my care. He turned 3 just a few weeks after we got him. Every time a patrol unit would be around the neighborhood, he would run in the house or hide behind me. I finally asked him why he was running and hiding. He told me “I don’t want them to take me back to jail.” I found out that his mother had been arrested and he and his big sister were placed on either side of their mom, who was handcuffed in the center. No wonder he thought that he had been arrested. I wanted to lesson the pain of these children and help them to understand that the officer or sheriff was not mad at them. They were helping them. It also made the officers feel better and the program continues on today as well as fire stations. We never took money and paid for supplies with our own money. We used to provide 5 new, stuffed toys in each plastic bag that my children and I would put together and we drove to each city in Orange County and Los Angeles County for photo ops with my children so that we could take photos for newspapers and TV News to show children that the police are nice and give children stuffed toys. It felt really good getting every police and sheriff’s units supplied with those toys We did Annual Holiday Party for 500 of these special children that we held at the Costa Mesa Community Center for 10 years. In-N-Out Burger provided the food for the children and El Pollo Loco provided the lunch for the foster & adoptive parents. My father insisted that I apply for non-profit status in order to help further.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
When ever my children and I would pick up a Birthmom at the John Wayne Statue inside the airport, they would have a sign with the girls name on it. After loading her up in the “Cuddle Van” we would take her down onto Balboa Island and show her the triplex that my grandfather had built in the early 1920’s on the main street, just after you would pass the old fire station. We would stop for frozen bananas and then surprised them with a ride on the ferry to go across to the Peninsula. Everyone would get out and take photos while I stayed in the car to pay.

They loved seeing the Pacific Ocean and would put their feet in the sand and if the weather was right, we would take them back for another day to enjoy the beach and the palm trees.

Enjoying The Crab Cooker for some delicious clam chowder was always a big hit. Often, if the weather permitted we would go out onto the pier. I couldn’t believe that so many of these girls and women had never seen a wave in real life or touched the ocean. I loved seeing their faces light up as I showed them things that were so foreign to them.

The last stop on the Peninsula was for shaved ice. The kids always went for the blue ones, and the girls usually would mix two different flavors because they just couldn’t decide.

If a girl or woman gave her baby or babies up for adoption, the Rescue Family that adopted would pay for me to take her out to a special lunch. I would tell them about Gulliver’s Restaurant and how John Wayne would go there for lunch every Wednesday and would order “his usual”, Prime Rib with creamed corn and creamed spinach. SO delicious!

A movie at the Big Edwards Theatre in Newport Beach by Fashion Island was a great treat as well. If the O.C. Fair was going on we would take them there. They always loved the funnel cake and the corn on the cob.

Disneyland was a MUST for the girls and we’d wait until after the girls had delivered so they could go on the big rides. If they really enjoyed themselves we might go to Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant in Buena Park and then go to all the shops that were free to visit outside of the actual Knott’s Berry Farm. So many cute little shops outside of the actual theme park, but when pregnant they couldn’t go on the main rides, but they still had a great time.

Another place that we took some of the girls was Medieval Times. They loved wearing the paper crowns and would cheer for their horse and rider. It was so great to see them having fun things.

A stop at the old See’s store on PCH before going down to the tide pools was always a super fun trip for them as well. Lots of memories were made thanks to having such wonderful locations to visit.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I want to thank the first Birthmom that was scared and felt that her only option with this hidden pregnancy was to give birth and leave it in the park. She was brave enough after seeing a news story about our new crisis hot-line just 12 hours after we opened and put her trust in us. Thanks and hugs to all those that followed her and continue to call. They have all made safe and legal decisions instead of dumping their babies in a back alley to slowly die, or…be buried alive to meet their untimely death. To Daddy “Rick” Richard Pyle D.D.S for teaching me to help others and to do things right. He would often say, “It’s not what you expect, but what you inspect that counts.” I have taken that to heart. To Mommy, Scotty Pyle who taught me silly songs and how to bake while singing those songs. You made the BEST Cream Puffs in the whole world! Thanks for teaching your 3 daughters how to make them. You taught me to find the good in everything, even when you were bedridden and I guess that’s where I get that same attitude that keeps me going. Anything to save more babies and keep girls/women from doing something they will forever regret.
A HUGE Thank you to my children and grandchildren that got stuck with me while dealing with a crisis call or sharing the dinner with up to 4 pregnant girls at one time when they were going through horrible situations, and not being able to spend as much quality time as I wanted with you. I know I have apologized to you for that, but just needed to say it one more time.
To those Rescue Families that opened their hearts and arms and were willing to work with Project Cuddle to be willing to Rescue and adopt one or more of those precious babies, thus giving each girl hope and control in choosing an open or closed adoption and picking a gift for her baby/babies in the Rescue Family that she would pick as her child/children’s “Forever Family”.
I want to thank all those Crisis Operators that have been at the ready and helped me as we put in a total of over 227,760 hours with over 20,000 calls and over 10,000 cases that have come into our toll-free, 24/7 CONFIDENTIAL number 1-888-628-3353 or 1-88 TOCUDDLE. Thanks to those that have donated their time as well as well as the funding we so desperately needed and STILL NEED as we have no paid staff., but plenty of expenses.

Website: www.projectcuddle.org

Instagram: projectcuddle_babysaver , debbemagnusen

Linkedin: Debbe Magnusen

Twitter: baby_ saver, Debbemagnusen, project_cuddle

Facebook: Project Cuddle

Youtube: Project Cuddle

Other: To see an episode where Debbe Magnusen was “kidnapped” in a good way, by her good friend, John Stamos, and taken in a blacked-out windows in a stretch limo that took her to an undisclosed destination. When the door opened, Oprah pulled Debbe out of the car and brought almost 200 of the babies that she had Rescued from being Abandoned…or worse from all across America to meet her at the Magic Castle at Disneyland. Just click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo_MsRUNtQY It will truly make you smile. Then, there is a follow up on YouTube done by Costa Mesa Brief on Project Cuddle and Debbe Magnusen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDLtXdBAU4U

Image Credits
My headshot credit Prasad All photos with the watermark credit Miguel Pola Photography All others are property of Project Cuddle.