[There was a video here]

Are you a goal-oriented person who, for career focus-related reasons, has recently placed your newborn in the care of a near-stranger? If so, you should probably prepare some answers for when the police come asking about your baby's whereabouts.

What you should probably not do is refuse to cooperate with them—especially when you're already wanted for violating the terms of your probation, or if there's a felony warrant out for your arrest. Or, better yet, both! This is the mistake made by Micah Ashley Alford, a 26-year-old mom from the Houston area who gave birth to a boy and then gave the time-consuming little fellow to this woman she sort of knew, but not really.

While applying for a job as a dancer at the Ritz Cabaret club for gentlemen, Alford was arrested by some police officers who, you know, heard that she'd delivered a baby recently, and, well, they were just wondering where that baby was, and stuff. Alford told the cops that she had no idea, which kicked off a search for the missing infant.

What happened next is both bizarre and utterly depressing:

Shortly after police put out an alert for the baby, two women called saying they had him.

They told investigators another woman gave them the baby and he had no milk or diapers at that time, but they went and bought those items. The women then agreed to meet officers at the Academy parking lot on Edgebrook and the Gulf Freeway to hand over the infant, who was fine.

Officers had been searching for the newborn for four days.

In addition to the abandoned baby, Alford's had three other kids—all of whom have been taken away from her by Child Protective Services. In 2007, she pleaded guilty to child abandonment and neglect, and got a DUI in 2009. She's now in the custody of the Galveston County Jail on a felony warrant based on her failing a drug test while pregnant with her latest baby; her bond's $100,000.

The good news for Alford is that she won't face any new charges abandoning the newborn. The bad news (besides being in jail): She didn't get the stripper job.

[KTRK, WKMG]