How Facebook helped find this kidnapped newborn baby.

It was an innocent gesture: A nurse reaching for 16-hour-old baby, claiming she needed to be weighed.

A person you would trust implicitly less than 24 hours after you had given birth.

But for Mélissa McMahon, that trust nearly had disastrous consequences.

An amazing story has developed in Canada, where a young mother innocently handed her newborn baby over to a kidnapper pretending to be a nurse.

But to the shock of new Mum Mélissa, that woman promptly fled the hospital dressed in her pretend hospital scrubs.

The distraught mother realised what had happened just moments later.

Police say the baby was abducted from the Ville-Marie hospital in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, on Monday night.

Within minutes, the entire hospital went into emergency mode.

Onlookers had noticed the car with its “Baby on Board” stickers leaving the car park, and security footage had recorded CCTV of the woman taking baby Victoria.

An amber alert was issued, and it went viral on social media.

And that’s is where this story took an unbelievable turn.

Four 20-year-olds who say they were “bored on a Monday night” noticed the amber alert while scrolling through their Facebook feed. Mélizanne and Sharelle Bergero,n along with Charlène Plante and Marc-André Côté, decided to go out hunting for the red car. They never thought they would find the baby.

“We’re pretty adventurous,” Plante told The Toronto Star.

“We’re always heading off somewhere, so we got the idea to go out looking for the car because there wasn’t really much else going on that night.”

But in an amazing coincidence, as they were driving the streets Mélizanne realised she recognised the image of the woman on the Facebook feed.

“It was my neighbour. Two weeks ago I moved and that’s why I knew her to see her,” she said.

The four 20-year-olds drove to the apartment block where she used to live. In the car park was a red Toyota with a “Baby on Board” sticker.

As all good amateur sleuths do, they decided to used an old key to get inside the building — while also alerting Police to their discovery.

Inside they heard a dog barking and water running in the woman’s apartme, signalling she was home.

Just minutes later, police broke down the door and the now-19-hour-old newborn was recovered.

For the four teenagers it was an amazing moment.

“It was really emotional. We were so relieved. It was intense,” Plante said.

Baby Victoria was rushed back to the maternity ward into the arms of her shocked and relieved parents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCTpD806kqA

Victoria’s Mum Mélissa took to Facebook – the very network that probably saved her daughter’s life – to thank her four young rescuers.

“Four marvellous people that we have had the chance to meet identified this woman thanks to Facebook. It’s the only reason that Victoria is in my arms right now,” she posted.

“Many thousands of people shared the photograph of this woman on social media without giving up. Know that this is what saved our little Victoria . . . Each click, each ‘share’ made the difference.”

The woman who took baby Victoria is yet to be charged, reportedly for reasons linked to the state of her mental health.