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Jessica McClure Morales made headlines across the world when she fell into a well when she was 18 months oldMorales was heroically rescued after nearly 60 hours spent in a 22-foot-deep wellShe has since reflected on the incident and told PEOPLE that her “life is a miracle”
Jessica McClure Morales became one of the most well-known children in the 1980s when she was saved from a deep well after 58 hours.
When she was just 18 months old, she fell 22 feet down a well in her aunt’s backyard in Midland, Texas, on Oct. 14, 1987. Nearly 60 hours after she fell in, Morales was pulled out and safely rescued.
The story was covered across the country both during and after the rescue and led to the 1989 television movie adaptation, Everybody’s Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure. Nearly 30 years after Morales’ heroic rescue, she reflected on the ordeal and told PEOPLE that her “life is a miracle.”
“In a way I guess it happened the way it was supposed to,” she said in 2017. “I was picked on because of it, but most people are kind and think what happened is an amazing miracle. It is. I don’t believe that any of it would’ve happened without God.”
Although most of the world knows Morales from the 1987 ordeal, she has since grown up and has children and grandchildren of her own.
Here is everything to know about Jessica McClure Morales’ life, 38 years after her rescue garnered international attention.
Who is Baby Jessica?
Cissy and Chip McClure with their daughter Jessica.
Bill Nation/Sygma via Getty
Baby Jessica was the nickname given to Morales after her rescue from a well when she was just 18 months old. Her story of survival captured the attention of millions and remains a notable moment in American media history.
In June 2019, Morales told PEOPLE that the name Baby Jessica is still an everyday thing.
“I have people that that’s how they associate me. I actually told a lady the other day at work that I was the little girl that fell in the well, and she was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re Baby Jessica!’ ” Morales said.
What happened to Baby Jessica?
Rescuers worked for 58 hours to free “Baby Jessica” from the eight-inch-wide hole in which she fell.
David Woo/Sygma via Getty
Morales had been playing with four other toddlers in her aunt’s backyard in Midland, Texas, when she fell 22 feet down a small well. It’s unknown how exactly she wound up down the abandoned shaft, and family and friends insist that the hole had been covered.
“I didn’t know what to do. I just ran in and called the police. They were there within three minutes, but it felt like a lifetime,” Jessica’s mother, Cissy, told PEOPLE in November 1987.
Her story became the focus of almost every main news outlet around the country, and people watched in agony for two days as rescuers attempted to save the toddler.
How was Baby Jessica saved?
Rescuers worked for 58 hours to free “Baby Jessica” from the eight-inch-wide hole in which she fell.
Bettmann/Getty
Hundreds of paramedics, rescuers, drilling experts and contractors worked around the clock to save Jessica’s life. After she endured 58 hours without food and water, they successfully pulled her from the well.
In November 1987, the first police officer on the scene, Bobbie Jo ”B.J” Hall, told PEOPLE that he couldn’t see anything when he first looked down the hole.
“I called the baby’s name three or four times and didn’t hear anything. Finally I got a cry in response. We didn’t know how deep she was until we lowered a tape hooked to a flashlight into the hole,” Hall continued.
Detective Andy Glasscock added, “I would say 80 percent of the time she was either crying or making some kind of noise we could hear. When we weren’t calling words of encouragement, we’d tell her to sing for us. I’ll never forget her singing ‘Winnie-the-Pooh.’ ”
According to The New York Timesas of July 2018, Morales was still in touch with the family of Steve Forbes, the paramedic who was famously photographed carrying her out of the well.
Does Baby Jessica have a family of her own?
Morales remains in rural Texas, living a quiet life with her husband, Danny, whom she met through his sister in 2005 and married the following year. In March 2017, Morales shared with PEOPLE that she “instantly fell in love with him” the day they met.
She added that Danny, who was 13 years old at the time of her rescue, remembers sitting and watching the event on the news and learning that she had been saved while at a football game in his town.
“They stopped the whole game to say, ‘Baby Jessica has been rescued,’ ” he said. “It was pretty cool.”
The couple now share two children: Simon and Sheyenne. Both of her children have welcomed a son, Emiliano (Nano) and Nolan.
Now old enough to understand, Morales’ kids have both researched their mother’s childhood ordeal. In March 2017, Morales told PEOPLE that Sheyenne’s elementary school teacher showed the class a video about the incident after Sheyenne revealed that her mom was Baby Jessica.
“Her teacher knew all about it,” Morales told PEOPLE, “but the other kids didn’t know what she was talking about.” In October 2016, the mom of two said that she hopes her kids learn from her rescue “to always be humble. And to remember that if you look hard enough, there are so many good people in this world.”
Where is Baby Jessica now?
Jessica McClure in 2019.
People/YouTube
After the incident, a trust fund of $1.2 million was established by people around the world who followed the rescue, including her husband’s mom.
“She went and scrounged every penny she could find to send it to me,” Morales told PEOPLE, adding that Danny “remembers sitting there with her as she held him tight, being thankful that she had them and that it wasn’t one of her kids.”
While much of the trust fund was lost during the stock market crash of 2008, the remaining funds were used to purchase a home.
Morales was formerly working as a special education assistant at an elementary school, but according to her Facebookshe now works in Midland at Richards Horticulture.
As for the traumatic accident, Morales told PEOPLE in April 2024 that she doesn’t remember being rescued.
“I learned about it when I was 4 and watched it on Rescue 911 at my then stepmother’s house. It was overwhelming. I remember crying. She said, ‘You do realize that is about you?’ My dad said, ‘We were waiting until she was a little bit older to tell her,’ ” Morales told PEOPLE.
Although Morales has no memory of the infamous experience, she does bear a few faint reminders following 15 surgeries. Her right foot, noticeably smaller than her left, required reconstruction after developing gangrene from being held above her head for the duration of her time in the well. Additionally, a barely visible scar on her forehead was left from falling asleep in the well as drilling commenced. While the incident remains part of Morales’ life, it doesn’t define her.
“It didn’t affect me the way it affected other people. I lived it, but I didn’t watch it,” she told The New York Times in 2018. One of the questions she gets asked the most is whether or not she’s returned to the well — which she has.
“Seeing the well for the first time, it was hard but it wasn’t upsetting,” Morales told PEOPLE in 2019. “To me, it’s a symbol that it could have taken my life, but it didn’t. I had God on my side that day.”
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