80-year-old Ruby Dunson has been raising abandoned children for 42 years — a job she first embraced after she agreed to babysit and the mother never returned for her infant.

In all, she raised 10 successful children in her small brick home on Detroit's west side, eight of whom she agreed to take in after they were abandoned at birth or abused as kids.

"She saved me from — I don't know — a life of the unknown," said Theresa Dunson, who was abandoned at birth at the hospital, weighing just 2 pounds. Ruby was already 52 years-old when she adopted the premature orphan after sleeping beside her at the hospital for a month.

(READ the story in the Detroit Free Press)