LOS ANGELES (AP) - All too often, the ring of Debi Faris-Cifelli's cell phone means there is another abandoned newborn at the morgue, another forsaken child for her to name and bury in a shoebox-size coffin under a white cross in the California desert.
Last week, though, Faris-Cifelli - who has had to rely on donations, grants and fund-raisers to give babies a decent burial - got a very different call.
She had won the California lottery.
The jackpot: $27 million.
"Maybe it's the children saying, 'Thank you' for taking care of them when nobody else would," Faris-Cifelli said, bubbling with laughter. "It's a gift and one for which we feel an awesome responsibility."
The money could not come at a better time for Faris-Cifelli and her Garden of Angels, the tiny cemetery in the town of Calimesa where she has buried dozens of tiny children whose mothers didn't hear - or didn't care - about California's safe-haven law.
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