Where is Baby Jessica in 2021? She lives with her family three kilometers away from the famous well

Jessica McClure Morales, known in the media as Baby Jessica, grabbed national attention during her 58-hour rescue from a twenty-foot well in October 1987. Baby Jessica fell into the well after her mother went into the house to pick a phone call. Rescue efforts commenced after first responders found out that the toddler was still alive. 

America watched the nearly 60-hour rescue on CNN. Baby Jessica emerged from the well wrapped in bandages, with dirty arms that told the story of the scary depths that had housed her for a few hours shy of three days. Despite lacking food and water, Baby Jessica emerged responsive. 

Jessica Morales lives with her husband, Danny, and two kids, Simon and Sheyenne three kilometers from the well that made her famous.

When Danny met Morales, he didn’t know that she was the famous Baby Jessica. “When my husband and I first started dating, he did not know who I was,” Jessica told People

“It was love at first sight. About a month into our relationship we were already engaged.” The couple married in a small private ceremony in 2006. They welcomed Simon in 2007 and Sheyenne in 2009. 

After Jessica turned 25, she gained access to a Trust Fund donated by strangers who watched her rescue. She told People that the 2008 financial crisis decimated a large chunk of the cash, but Jessica had enough left to buy the family’s home. 

“I think it’s amazing that people would come together like that to donate money to a child that was not theirs,” Jessica said. “I appreciate everything they did. I had God on my side that day. My life is a miracle.”

Jessica works as a special-education teacher’s aide, and Danny is a foreman in a pipe supply company. Family is the most essential thing to Jessica right now. “Had I not survived, none of this would have been,”  she occasionally reflects

“That’s all Jessica has ever wanted was to be a mom and have a family,” her dad Lewis McClure told The Associated Press. “She’s a good mom and keeps her eyes on her kids. She’s certainly a dotting mother.”

Jessica learned of her ordeal after watching an episode of Rescue 911 when she was five years old. Unfortunately, Jessica became a target for bullying after peers figured out her identity. 

“There were a few times I was picked on specifically for being ‘Baby Jessica,’” Jessica told People. “I had a kid that called me ‘well-dweller’ for a good couple of years. Kids are blunt – they say what’s on their minds. Especially when everybody in the world is like, ‘Oh, Baby Jessica’s got money,’ and I wore hand-me-downs.”

The bullying and the fact that she has no memory of her ordeal might have inspired Jessica to live a secretive life. Baby Jessica’s rescue doesn’t exist in Jessica’s mind, but her body carries scars that constantly remind her of the ordeal. 

The scar on her forehead is barely visible, but her right foot is visibly smaller than her left foot. The surgeons had to reconstruct her right foot after part of it became gangrenous due to restricted blood flow. 

In a 2002 interview with Ladies Home Journal, Jessica stated that talk of that incident bored her and that she was proud of her scars. “I have them [scars] because I survived,” she said. 

Jessica also revealed that she has rheumatoid arthritis but doesn’t let the condition restrict her from enjoying life. She talked to People about her feeling when she first saw the well as an adult:

“Seeing the well for the first time (as an adult) was hard, but it wasn’t upsetting. 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.”

Jessica rarely discusses the incident with her family. “It seems a little surreal,” her father told AP. “In some ways, it seems familiar and recent. Other times, it seems like someone else a long time ago.”

“She’s [Jessica] not the center-of-attention person,” he added. “She just doesn’t think a whole lot about it.”