The Colorado Chapter of the R Baby Foundation was started by Dan and Corinne McMurray of Arvada in honor of their baby girl, Rhiannon. Rhiannon Fay-Marie McMurray was born healthy and happy on May 3, 2006, and went home after the usual time at the hospital to start her life with her mom, dad, and big brother Tommy. After several days, however, she became fussy, stopped eating, and began acting as if she did not feel well. Rhiannon’s parents rushed her to the doctor’s office where she went into cardiac arrest. She was ultimately choppered to The Children’s Hospital, but doctors there were unable to save her. She died when she was 9 days old. The coroner later determined Rhiannon had contracted a virus sometime in her first week of life; her tiny body could not fight it.

In 2007, Corinne was reading a parenting magazine when she came across an ad for the R Baby Foundation, founded by Andrew and Phyllis Rabinowitz in New York after the death of their daughter, Rebecca. “I had to look at it twice,” Corinne recalls, “They had lost Rebecca at 9 days old – the exact same age as Rhiannon when she passed away. The symptoms were eerily similar, and I felt goose bumps cover my body. It was comforting and a kind of relief. I felt like I was really meant to find that ad.” She later learned that Rebecca and Rhiannon had died from the same virus.