'Baby Jessica' Was Rescued from a Texas Well 37 Years Ago. Here's Where She Is Now — and What She Remembers from Her 2 Days Underground

Mar. 15, 2025

AP; Julian Dufort

“I had God on my side that day,” Jessica told PEOPLE in October 2016. “My life is a miracle.”

On October 14 1987, 18 month old Jessica McClure fell into an eight inch diameter well pipe in the backyard of her aunt in Midland, Texas. She remained there for 58 hours before being rescued at about 8:30 pm on October 16, 1987.Barbara Laing / Liaison Agency

Barbara Laing / Liaison Agency

On October 14 1987, 18 month old Jessica McClure fell into an eight inch diameter well pipe in the backyard of her aunt in Midland, Texas. She remained there for 58 hours before being rescued at about 8:30 pm on October 16, 1987. Mother - Reba “Cissy” McClure.Barbara Laing / Liaison Agency

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.

A craftsman proudly displays the gift which he created for 18-month-old Jessica McClure who was successfully rescued from a 22-foot (6.7 meter) underground abandoned water well in Midland, Texas, Oct. 17, 1987. The metal cover will be placed over the opening in the ground where Jessica fell in. (AP Photo/Eric Gay).AP

AP

Hundreds of paramedics, rescuers, drilling experts and contractors worked around the clock to save Jessica’s life. After enduring 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.

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 toThe New York Times, as 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.

Julian Dufort

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.

“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 for Danny, Morales and their two children: Simon and Sheyenne.

“Her teacher knew all about it,” Morales told PEOPLE, “but the other kids didn’t know what she was talking about.”

In October 2016, Morales told PEOPLE she hopes they 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.”

Morales was formerly working as a special education assistant at an elementary school, but according to herFacebook, she has been working in Midland as a landscape laborer since August 2021.

As for the traumatic accident, Morales told PEOPLE in April 2024 that shedoesn’t remember being rescued.

“I learned about it when I was 4 and watched it onRescue 911at 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 toldThe New York Timesin 2018. Still, she sometimes reflects on how much has changed since the event, telling PEOPLE in April 2024 that it “happened the way it was supposed to.”

“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,” she continued.

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.”

source: people.com