Ed and Julian

 Christmas Eve, 1931, its o'clock  in the evening when Ed and julian Stewaet's car suddenly breakdown in the middle of nowhere seven miles west of superior,  Arizona

While Ed tries to figure out what the problem is, Julia walks nervously through the desert. And a hundred yards from the road she comes across an abandoned hatbox. Attracted by a noise, the woman approaches; she thinks that inside there might be an abandoned kitten or puppy.

But she certainly doesn't expect to find, wrapped in a blue blanket, a little red-haired girl; abandoned in the middle of nowhere, she whimpers from the cold and hunger but is apparently in good health. Julia lets out a scream. Her husband runs over, the two look around: as far as the eye can see there is no one. The couple picks up the little girl, and after a quick repair of the car, they take her to the nearest town and hand her over to the authorities. The doctors who are treating her determine that the little girl is no more than a week old.

All the media tell the incredible Christmas story, and the "Hatbox Baby" becomes a national celebrity. On February 16, 1932, a hearing is held at the Pinal County Court in Florence, Arizona. Seventeen couples had requested to adopt the child. The choice falls on the Morrow family. The adoptive mother Faith names her Sharon, the child grows up and lives a happy and healthy life, without ever knowing that she was adopted, nor that she is the "Hatbox Baby".

Only 54 years later, in 1986, she learns the truth: her parents are adoptive, and she is the "Hatbox Baby". Sharon begins to search for her natural parents, relying on the association "Orphan Voyage". What Americans call a "cold case" opens: reading the documents, the investigators become skeptical of the story told by the Stewarts. They believe that they were actually the ones who picked up the little girl on the morning of December 24, 1931 during a stop in the town of Roosevelt.

The detectives track down the Stewarts and their children: they all remembered the accident very well, but they firmly denied any involvement. Ed died in 1992, Julia in 2002. In the end, the investigators are convinced that the Stewarts' is a false lead. Others will follow.

The truth comes out only in 2017: through DNA testing and searches on genealogy websites, the investigators finally identify Sharon's real parents. Her biological mother, Freda Strackbein Roth, died in 1991, her father, Walter Roth in 2005, her brother James in 2017. Sharon is only able to get in touch with her niece. It turns out that Freda and Walter had married a few months before Sharon's birth, but abandoned the child because she had been conceived before the marriage.

The mystery of how the child was abandoned in the desert remains. Instead, an incredible truth emerges: Faith, Sharon's adoptive mother, knew everything and had ties to the Roth family. She was the one who helped them organize the abandonment, later taking action successfully to have the child adopted. On December 1, 2018, Sharon died; she was 86 years old