Mother Is Accused of Abandoning 1-Year-Old : Crime: She called police after watching television appeals for information in the case, officials say. The child was left outside an apartment building.

A Los Angeles woman turned herself in to police, saying she was moved by television images of the 1-year-old girl she had abandoned 10 days ago, authorities said Wednesday.

Ruth Contreras, 19, was arrested Tuesday night by Huntington Park police on suspicion of child abandonment and child endangerment after she called the department and confessed that she had left her baby outside an apartment building in the 5900 block of Carmenita Avenue, said Detective Ramon Martin.

Martin said the woman had maintained that she left the child “out of desperation,” but he would not elaborate on Contreras’ suspected motives.

Police and Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services officials had appealed for information about the baby and her mother at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Contreras called Huntington Park police and gave them her address after watching television coverage of the event later that day. Police drove to her West Los Angeles home, and Contreras directed them to the apartment building where she had dropped off the child on Jan. 8. She was arrested at the site, Martin said.

“It was raining that day, and the baby was just left outside,” he said, adding that police received a call that a baby had been abandoned in front of the Carmenita Avenue building. The infant “was crawling around. . . . In the seven years I’ve been here, I have never seen a child abandoned in this manner. Just left at a doorstep.”

Ryan Rainey, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the child abuse and sexual crimes unit, said incidents of child abandonment have increased slightly in the last two to three years, although he could not provide data.

“It’s probably due to economic conditions,” he said. “As it becomes more difficult to provide for yourself, it becomes even more difficult to provide for your children.”

Rainey speculated that Contreras wanted the child “to be found, to be taken care of. It’s like leaving a child on the doorstep of a church.”

Contreras was being held at the Sybil Brand Institute for Women on $25,000 bail, authorities said. She is scheduled to be arraigned today in Huntington Park.

Police turned the baby over to Children’s Services, which placed her in a foster home, said Emma Montero, a department administrator.

“She is very healthy. She weighs 25 pounds,” said Montero, adding that the baby appears to have been well taken care of.

A county dependency court judge will determine whether the child will be placed in permanent foster care, be turned over to relatives or be reunited with the mother, Children’s Services officials said.

Felony endangerment carries a maximum prison term of of six years and felony abandonment a maximum of three years, authorities said.