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Barista Who Helped Deliver Baby At Starbucks Reunites With Him 18 Years Later

While there are some who may not believe it, extraordinary things happen every day.

That's certainly the case for one Starbucks barista who went from completing a typical shift to helping deliver a baby inside the store. To make matters even more inspiring, that same barista was recently reunited with the now-all-grown-up baby he helped bring into the world 18 years ago.

It all started at a Starbucks location in Wilmette, Illinois.

As Good Morning America reported, on August 20, 2002, then-21-year-old Griffin Baron was working as a barista at the popular coffee chain.

He sold a woman named Lisabeth Rohlck a bottle of water, but little did he know that after she paid for her purchase and headed to the bathroom, both their lives would change forever.

There were screams coming from the women's bathroom.

Baron and another Starbucks customer were startled by the startling noises coming from the women's bathroom.

The barista called 9-1-1, as instructed by the other customer, then went to the bathroom to see what was happening. To his shock, the woman he just sold the water to was sitting on the floor in the process of giving birth to a baby.

Although he had very limited (or rather, *zero*) experience with delivering a baby, Baron knew the woman needed his help.

Gigin Krishnan l Unsplash (not actual photo)

"I'm 21. I know nothing about delivering babies," he recalled to GMA. "All I knew was you get hot towels, because that's what you see in movies."

Even still, Baron remained by the woman's side, along with the customer who also came to help Rohlck,. Four minutes after they had first heard her screaming, she gave birth to a baby boy. An ambulance crew soon arrived and took both mom and baby to the hospital for further medical attention.

The story immediately garnered wide-spread media attention with several news outlets interviewing both Baron and new-mom Rohlck about that remarkable day.

Baron said he spent years wondering what had come of that baby boy he helped deliver during an unforgettable shift at Starbucks.

Unsplash | TR

18 years later, the now-39-year-old Baron was finally able to track the family down, though learned some tragic news. A GoFundMe page he discovered revealed that Rohlck had died of breast cancer in 2012 and her husband had passed away in 2020.

Baron left a message on that GoFundMe page to say that he was the Starbucks barista who was there the day Johnathan was born.

From that message, Baron got in contact with Johnathan's aunt, who connected the former barista to Jonathan himself.

Last month, after talking together on Facebook, the pair were able to finally meet face-to-face at that very same Starbucks where they had first met nearly two decades ago.

"[Mom] would always tell me the story and would say how insane those next few weeks were for her -- just a total media circus," Jonathan told GMA. "When [Baron] reached out, it came full circle, which was cool."

h/t: Good Morning America