An 18-year-old Idaho woman was arrested after she allegedly dropped a dead baby in a Safe Haven Baby Box at a hospital, according to police.

Angel N. Newberry was taken into custody on an arrest warrant for failing to report a death to law enforcement officials and the coroner, Blackfoot Police said. She was booked into the Bingham County Jail.

The Safe Haven Baby Box allows parents to safely and anonymously surrender a newborn under 30 days old without legal repercussions, as long as the child is unharmed. Leaving a harmed or deceased infant, however, is not protected.

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Newberry’s arrest comes following an investigation that was launched after police responded on Oct. 13 to a report of a dead baby left in a baby box at Grove Creek Medical Center.

Safe Haven Baby Boxes has said hospital staff responded immediately to an alarm indicating a baby was in the box and that the infant had died long before being left inside.

“Grove Creek Medical Center staff responded immediately to the alarm, indicating a baby was in the box,” Safe Haven Baby Boxes wrote on Facebook last month. “The medical team removed the infant from the bassinet within a minute. Upon removal, they quickly realized that the infant had passed away long before being placed in the baby box. The Safe Haven Law in Idaho allows for the surrender of an infant who is unharmed and healthy. Therefore, this was not a legal surrender under state law as it does not meet the criteria for Safe Haven surrender.”

Safe Haven Baby Box (Safe Haven Baby Boxes)

The group’s founder, Monica Kelsey, said: “We are heartbroken. Let this be clear: this is an illegal, deadly abandonment. Anonymity is only allowed when an infant is safely surrendered completely unharmed.”

When the baby was placed in the box, she was wrapped in a blanket with the placenta still attached, Kelsey noted.

Due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation and the potential for further criminal charges, police said they are limited in the information they can release.

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When the baby was placed in the box, she was wrapped in a blanket with the placenta still attached. (iStock)

Blackfoot Police collaborated with Twin Falls Police on the investigation.

The baby box at Grove Creek was put in place in July, making it the first in the state where parents can surrender newborns safely and anonymously, according to KIVI.

• Mike Manalac has worked in the tech hubs of San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Chicago since 2016.
• He says each place has its strengths, but Chicago is the best place for raising a family.
• Chicago offers Manalac and his family the perfect balance career, affordability, and family life.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mike Manalac, a 39-year-old accounting manager at Google. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

Over the past eight years, I’ve worked in the tech scenes of San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Chicago. The three places couldn’t be more different in terms of lifestyle, and they’ve each appealed to me for different reasons.

Here’s how the three places compare:

San Francisco is fun but not for the faint of heart

I moved to San Francisco in 2016 to pursue world-class career opportunities and adventure. I’d spent the past eight years as an audit manager in Baltimore and the cross-country move was a big change for me.

As someone with ambitious career goals, San Francisco was the mecca of opportunity, so I joined PwC to get closer to Bay Area tech jobs. Some of the world’s most innovative companies were basically next door, and their corporate headquarters lined the city’s blocks like Lego bricks.

I once interviewed at Salesforce’s headquarters while on my lunch break since it was only a few blocks away from PwC. When doing phone screens for Uber, Twitter, and Dolby, I knew I’d be able to walk over to their offices for an on-site interview at a moment’s notice.

As a young professional with limited life responsibilities, San Francisco turned out to be the perfect place to live fast and loose. The social scene was amazing — a night out for drinks could mean stopping by a speakeasy with no sign, sipping a mai tai on a floating tiki bar, or drinks served from a bathtub at a bar the size of a walk-in closet.

San Francisco also has the best park scene in the country; I’ve yet to find a better party than a regular Saturday afternoon at Dolores Park.

It’s also a walkable city. For the first time in my adult life, I was car-free. The city was full of trendy coffee shops, unique bars and restaurants, and charming neighborhoods to explore.

But living in San Francisco also isn’t for the faint of heart. Outside of coworkers, my then-fiancée (and now wife) and I found it incredibly challenging to make friends; everyone seemed to assign others a level of importance based on where they lived and worked. I also would’ve needed an absurd amount of wealth to purchase a home and raise a family there.

I felt that the city’s biggest blemish, though, was the seedy Tenderloin district, which sits smack dab in the middle of downtown. I had to walk through the neighborhood to catch a corporate shuttle bus to work, and I saw my fair share of sketchy characters and shady dealings at the time.

Silicon Valley’s career opportunities were unmatched

Later that year, I started working in Silicon Valley after I joined Walmart’s eCommerce division in San Bruno. And the following year, I landed a job as an accounting manager at Google’s Sunnyvale campus.

Silicon Valley offers the coolest places to work and its career opportunities are unmatched. I was amazed by the sprawling corporate campuses. Walking through Facebook’s invite-only campus, which is like a walled garden city, and down its main street, Hacker Way, I was in awe. In nearby Mountain View, I couldn’t believe how nearly every building in the city was branded with Google’s logo.

I saw corporate buses and colorful bikes whizzing around and young professionals with corporate badges on their hips and branded backpacks on their backs.

While Silicon Valley may be the tech capital of the world, I’d never live there. For one thing, I couldn’t afford it; the cookie-cutter neighborhoods of Silicon Valley are reserved for millionaires and the hillside mansions for billionaires. I, on the other hand, commuted from San Francisco via corporate shuttle bus.

But I wouldn’t have wanted to live there anyway. The social scene was dead, the city wasn’t walkable, and the nightlife was nonexistent. Nobody I knew went to happy hour after work, restaurants closed early, and most people only lived there because of the proximity to work.

Chicago has a down-to-earth social scene and affordable, family-friendly neighborhoods

I moved to Chicago with my wife in 2019, transferring to Google’s Chicago office. The cost of living in Chicago was much cheaper, my commute would be shorter, and we’d be closer to her family in Michigan and mine in Maryland.

Chicago doesn’t have the buzzy tech scene or beautiful weather of San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but it’s no slouch when it comes to career opportunities. More Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Chicago than in almost every other city in the US, and the job opportunities are much more diverse than what you’ll find in the tech-centric San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

From Google’s office in Chicago’s West Loop, I can see McDonald’s global headquarters down the street and a number of other premier employers dotting the city skyline.

Chicago is a city that likes to party, making San Francisco look sleepy by comparison. Bars don’t close until 2 a.m., with some staying open until 4 a.m. Chicago’s Lake Michigan beach scene is much livelier than that of San Francisco. But the social scene also has a down-to-earth vibe; people are Midwest nice and seem to live at a more casual pace.

The best part about Chicago is the moderate cost of living. I was able to afford a three-unit home with rental potential in Chicago for $830,000 — a price I’d never find in San Francisco — that’s in a walkable neighborhood. It’s the perfect blend of family-friendly city life. Our three-year-old son loves taking the train home from daycare and running wild at one of the city’s many playgrounds.

I think Chicago is the best of the three places to start a family

After working in these three awesome places, I’ve realized that even the best cities have their flaws.

San Francisco has the coolest social scene and overall vibe, but it’s one of the worst cities for settling down because of its high costs.

Silicon Valley offers the best career opportunities, but its social scene is lacking since everything there is about work, work, work.

Chicago is the best of the three locations to start a family due to its affordability and comfortable pace of life, but it’s not quite as cool as San Francisco and can’t match the career opportunities offered in Silicon Valley.

Overall, though, it’s hard to beat Chicago’s mix of career opportunities, vibrant social scene, and opportunities to start a family.

If you’ve moved around for work and would like to share your experiences of different cities, email Jane Zhang at janezhang@businessinsider.com.

Mayor Mike Johnston is confused. 

Denver’s mayor wants to stand athwart the city’s boundaries to stop people from leaving. His problem is he’s focused on the wrong people. 

Apparently seeking to bolster his progressive bona-fides, Mayor Mike recently staged a public hissy fit about the incoming Trump administration’s plan to deport illegal immigrants. In a bizarre rant he had to walk back, he said he would deploy the already understaffed Denver Police Department to stop federal immigration agents. 

If his goal was to get national attention as a pro-illegal immigrant warrior, it worked. 

Badly. 

He managed to shine the spotlight on the widespread failures of Colorado’s capital city to reverse its decline. He also reminded citizens the massive influx of migrants has stretched the municipal and school district budgets beyond the breaking point. 

Quickly realizing he was over his skis, he said well maybe citizens would rise up and he would lead the resistance.

Resist what? 

Deporting the 1.3 million illegals for whom the federal government, under President Joe Biden, has already issued final orders of removal? Or fighting the departure of the minority of migrants who commit crimes?

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It would be nice if Mayor Mike had as much passion to resist — and reverse — the steady decay of the city he was elected to lead. 

Mike Johnston’s problem isn’t preventing illegals from leaving. It’s bringing back workers, diners and shoppers who have already left — and aren’t eager to return.

A study by the Common Sense Institute (CSI) looked at downtown Denver’s recovery from the pandemic.

What will not surprise anyone who has been downtown recently — Denver has the lowest foot traffic of 16 major cities studied by the University of Toronto. One reason is Denver has the highest office vacancy rate among Front Range cities, with one-quarter of offices sitting empty — and, oddly, the highest office lease rates. 

And worse, the state of Denver’s downtown also discourages people who do not live or work in the city from venturing out for an evening. 

This is what makes Johnston’s assertion he would deploy Denver cops to stop the deportation of illegals even more out of touch. Crime in Denver is sky high and that’s where the mayor needs to focus his police force. 

The CSI study showed there were 1,150 crimes in the third quarter of 2024, the highest of any third quarter since before the pandemic. This tracks with a Downtown Denver Partnership survey, which CSI cites, that says a major issue afflicting downtown is a lack of a sense of safety and security. 

As disturbing as these facts are, downtown’s decline wasn’t caused by the pandemic. COVID merely hastened and deepened it.  

Those of us who worked downtown pre-pandemic experienced the rise in homelessness, vagrancy, drug use, aggressive panhandling and more. 

Years before the pandemic struck, a leader in the business community told me about how he was excited to show off Denver as a destination for meetings and conventions. He said he was going to bus site selectors from the convention center Hilton at 15th and California to Guard and Grace restaurant at 18th and California. 

Driving them three blocks?

“Well I can’t take the chance of having them walk and encounter who knows what by the 16th Street Mall,” he said. 

The city then was so bad it had to hide the dysfunction on display downtown — like hanging a picture in a weird place in your living room to cover a gaping hole in the wall. 

Wouldn’t something that bad be a wake-up call for the city?

The elected leaders hit snooze. 

Others, like the Downtown Denver Partnership, have sincerely fought to reverse the continually rising tide of decay. But there is only so much one organization can do.

Denver, like too many American cities governed by naïve progressives, has been rendered unworthy of good people who want to live, work and play in Colorado’s capital city.  

Decades ago, Denver Mayor Frederico Peña challenged citizens to “imagine a great city.” Now people who make a great city thrive are rejecting downtown in droves because they can’t even imagine a decent city anymore. 

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.