Just before noon on a summer day four years ago, a Plant city, Florida, police car pulled up outside a rental house with shattered windows. Two officers went into the house—and one stumbled back out. Clutching his stomach, the rookie retched in the weeds.

Plant City detective Mark Holste had been on the force for 18 years when he and his young partner were sent to the house on Old Sydney Road to stand by during a child abuse investigation.

They found an investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families parked outside. The driver’s door was open and a woman was slumped over in her seat, sobbing. “Unbelievable,” she told Holste. “The worst I’ve ever seen.”

Tattered curtains, yellow with cigarette smoke, dangling from bent metal rods. Cardboard and old comforters stuffed into broken, grimy windows. Trash blanketing the stained couch, the sticky counters.

While Holste looked around, a stout woman in a faded housecoat demanded to know what was going on. Yes, she lived there. Yes, those were her two sons in the living room. Her daughter? Well, yes, she had a daughter . . .

The detective strode past her, down a narrow hall. He turned the handle on a door, which opened into a space the size of a walk-in closet. He squinted in the dark.

At his feet, something stirred.

First he saw the girl’s eyes: dark and wide, unfocused, unblinking. She wasn’t looking at him so much as through him.

She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side, long legs tucked into her emaciated chest. Her ribs and collarbone jutted out; one skinny arm was slung over her face; her dark hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores pocked her skin. Though she looked old enough to be in school, she was naked—except for a swollen diaper.

When he bent to lift her, she yelped like a lamb. “It felt like I was picking up a baby,” Holste said. The girl didn’t struggle. Holste asked, “What’s your name, honey?” The girl didn’t seem to hear.

He searched for clothes to dress her, but found only balled-up laundry. He looked for a toy, a doll, a stuffed animal. “But the only ones I found were covered in maggots and roaches.”

Choking back rage, he approached the mother. How could you let this happen? He wanted to arrest the woman right then, but when he called his boss, he was told to let DCF do its own investigation.

“Radio ahead to Tampa General,” Holste told his partner. “If this child doesn’t get to a hospital, she’s not going to make it.”

Her name, her mother had said, was Danielle. She was almost seven years old.  She weighed 46 pounds. She was malnourished and anemic. In the pediatric intensive care unit they tried to feed the girl, but she couldn’t chew or swallow solid food. So they put her on an IV and let her drink from a bottle.

Aides bathed her, scrubbed the sores on her face, trimmed her torn fingernails. They had to cut her tangled hair before they could comb out the lice.

Her caseworker determined that she had never been to school, never seen a doctor. She didn’t know how to hold a doll, didn’t understand peekaboo. “Due to the severe neglect,” a doctor would write, “the child will be disabled for the rest of her life.”

Hunched in an oversized crib, Danielle curled in on herself like a potato bug, then writhed angrily, kicking and thrashing. To calm herself, she batted at her toes and sucked her fists. “Like an infant,” one doctor wrote.

She wouldn’t make eye contact. She didn’t react to heat or cold—or pain. The insertion of an IV needle elicited no reaction. She never cried. With a nurse holding her hands, she could stand and walk sideways on her toes, like a crab. She couldn’t talk, didn’t know how to nod yes or no. Once in a while she grunted.

Dr. Kathleen Armstrong, director of pediatric psychology at the University of South Florida medical school, was the first psychologist to examine Danielle. She said medical tests, brain scans, and vision, hearing, and genetics checks found nothing wrong with the child. She wasn’t deaf, wasn’t autistic, had no physical ailments such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy.

The doctors and social workers doubted she had ever been taken out in the sun, sung to sleep, even hugged or held. She was fragile and beautiful, but whatever makes a person human seemed somehow missing.

Armstrong called the girl’s condition “environmental autism.” Danielle had been deprived of interaction for so long, the doctor believed, that she had withdrawn into herself. Danielle’s was “the most outrageous case of neglect I’ve ever seen.”

The authorities had discovered the rarest and most pitiable of creatures: a feral child.

The term is not a diagnosis. It comes from historic accounts—some fictional, some true—of children raised by animals and therefore not exposed to human nurturing. Wolf boys and bird girls, Tarzan, Mowgli from The Jungle Book.

“In the first five years of life, 85 percent of the brain is developed,” said Dr. Armstrong. “Those early relationships, more than anything else, help wire the brain and provide children with the experience to trust, to develop language, to communicate. They need that system to relate to the world.”

Danielle had probably missed the chance to learn speech, but maybe she could come to understand language, to communicate in other ways. Still, doctors had only the most modest ambitions for her.

“My hope was that she would be able to sleep through the night, to be out of diapers and to feed herself,” Armstrong said. If things went really well, she said, Danielle would end up “in a nice nursing home.”

Danielle spent six weeks at Tampa General before she was well enough to leave. But where could she go? Not home; Judge Martha Cook, who oversaw her dependency hearing, ordered that Danielle be placed in foster care and that her mother not be allowed to call or visit her. The mother was being investigated on criminal child abuse charges.

Eventually Danielle was placed in a group home in Land O’Lakes. She had a bed with sheets and a pillow, clothes and food, and someone at least to change her diapers.

In October 2005, a couple of weeks after she turned 7, Danielle started school for the first time. She was placed in a special ed class at Sanders Elementary.

“Her behavior was different than any child I’d ever seen,” said Kevin O’Keefe, Danielle’s first teacher. “If you put food anywhere near her, she’d grab it” and mouth it like a baby, he said. “She had a lot of episodes of great agitation, yelling, flailing her arms, rolling into a fetal position. She’d curl up in a closet, just to be away from everyone. She didn’t know how to climb a slide or swing on a swing. She didn’t want to be touched.”

It took her a year just to become consolable, he said.

By Thanksgiving 2006—a year and a half after Danielle had gone into foster care—her caseworker was thinking about finding her a permanent home.

A nursing home, group home, or medical foster care facility could take care of Danielle. But she needed more. Luanne Panacek, executive director of the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County, decided to include Danielle in the Heart Gallery—a set of portraits depicting children available for adoption. The Children’s Board displays the pictures in malls and on the Internet in hopes that people will fall in love with the children and take them home.

In Hillsborough alone, 600 kids are available for adoption. Who, Panacek wondered, would choose an eight-year-old who was still in diapers, who didn’t know her own name, and might not ever speak or let you hug her?

Bernie and Diane Lierow stood silently inside GameWorks in Tampa, overwhelmed by the noise. Teenagers tore through the arcade, firing fake rifles. Sweaty boys hunched over air hockey tables. Girls squealed as they stomped on blinking squares.

The Lierows had driven three hours from their home in Fort Myers Beach, hoping to meet a child at this foster care event. But all these kids seemed too wild, too big, and too worldly.

Bernie, 49, remodels houses. Diane, 46, cleans homes. They have four grown sons from previous marriages and one together. Two years ago, when their son William was nine, they decided to adopt.

Their new daughter would have to be younger than William, they told foster workers. But she would have to be potty-trained and able to feed herself. They didn’t want a child who might hurt their son, or who was profoundly disabled and unable to take care of herself.

That’s why they were at this Heart Gallery gathering, scanning the crowd.

Bernie’s head ached from all the jangling games; Diane’s stomach hurt, seeing all the abandoned kids; and William was tired of shooting aliens.

Diane stepped out of the chaos, into an alcove beneath the stairs. That was when she saw her. A little girl’s face on a flyer, pale with sunken cheeks and dark hair chopped too short. Her brown eyes seemed to be searching for something.

Diane called Bernie over. He saw the same thing she did. “She just looked like she needed us.”

Bernie and Diane are humble, unpretentious people who would rather picnic on their deck than eat out. They go to work, go to church, visit with their neighbors, walk their dogs. They don’t travel or pursue exotic interests; a vacation for them is hanging out at home with the family. Shy and soft-spoken, they’re both slow to anger and seldom argue.

They had everything they ever wanted, they said. Except for a daughter. But the more they asked about Danielle, the more they didn’t want to know.

She was eight, but functioned as a two-year-old. She was in a group home. She wore diapers, couldn’t feed herself, couldn’t talk. After more than a year in school, she still wouldn’t make eye contact or play with other kids.

“She was everything we didn’t want,” Bernie said.

But they couldn’t forget those aching eyes.

When they met Danielle at her school, she was drooling. Her tongue hung from her mouth. Her head, which seemed too big for her thin neck, lolled from side to side.

She looked at them for an instant, then loped away across the special ed classroom. She rolled onto her back, rocked for a while, then batted at her toes.

Diane walked over and spoke to her softly. Danielle didn’t seem to notice. But when Bernie bent down, Danielle turned toward him and her eyes seemed to focus.

He held out his hand. She let him pull her to her feet. Danielle’s teacher, Kevin O’Keefe, was amazed; he hadn’t seen her warm up to anyone so quickly.

Bernie led Danielle to the playground, pulling sideways, prancing on her tiptoes. She squinted in the sunlight but let him push her gently on the swing. When it was time for them to part, Bernie swore he saw Danielle wave.

That night, Bernie had a dream. Two giant hands slid through his bedroom ceiling, the fingers laced together. Danielle was swinging on those hands, her dark eyes wide, thin arms reaching for him.

Everyone told them not to do it—neighbors, coworkers, friends. Everyone said they didn’t know what they were getting into.

So what if Danielle is not everything we hoped for? Bernie and Diane answered. You can’t pre-order your own kids. You take what God gives you.

They brought Danielle home on Easter weekend 2007. It was supposed to be a rebirth of sorts—a baptism into their family.

“It was a disaster,” Bernie said.

They gave her a doll; she bit off its hands. They took her to the beach; she screamed and wouldn’t put her feet in the sand. Back at her new home, she tore from room to room, her swim diaper spewing streams across the carpet.

She couldn’t peel the wrapper from a chocolate egg, so she ate the shiny paper too. She couldn’t sit still to watch TV or look at a book. She couldn’t hold a crayon. When they tried to brush her teeth or comb her hair, she kicked and thrashed. She wouldn’t lie in a bed, wouldn’t go to sleep, just rolled on her back, side to side, for hours.

All night she kept popping up, creeping sideways on her toes into the kitchen. She would pull out the frozen food drawer and stand on the bags of vegetables so she could see into the refrigerator.

“She wouldn’t take anything,” Bernie said. “I guess she wanted to make sure the food was still there.”

When Bernie tried to guide her back to bed, Danielle railed against him and bit her own hands.

Bernie and Diane already thought of Danielle as their daughter, but legally she wasn’t. Danielle’s birth mother did not want to give her up even though she had been charged with child abuse and faced 20 years in prison. So prosecutors offered a deal: If she waived her parental rights, they wouldn’t send her to jail.

She took the plea. She was given two years of house arrest, plus probation and 100 hours of community service.

In October 2007, Bernie and Diane officially adopted Danielle. They call her Dani.

"Okay, let's put your shoes on. Do you need to go potty again?” Diane asks.

It’s an overcast Monday morning in 2008 and Dani is late for school. Again. She keeps flitting around the living room, ducking behind chairs and sofas, pulling at her shorts.

After more than a year with her new family, Dani scarcely resembles the girl in the Heart Gallery photo. She has grown a foot and her weight has doubled.

All those years she was kept inside, her hair was as dark as the dirty room she lived in. But since she started going to the beach and swimming in their backyard pool, Dani’s shoulder-length hair has turned a golden blond. She still shrieks when anyone tries to brush it.

The changes in her behavior are subtle, but Bernie and Diane see progress. They give an example: When Dani feels overwhelmed, she retreats to her room, rolls onto her back, pulls one sock toward the end of her toes, and bats it. For hours. Bernie and Diane tell her to stop.

Now, when Dani hears them coming, she peels off her sock and throws it into the closet to hide it.

She’s learning right from wrong, they say. And she seems upset when she knows she has disappointed them, as if she cares how they feel.

Bernie and Diane were told to put Dani in school with profoundly disabled children, but they insisted on different classes because they believe she can do more. They have her in speech classes and horseback riding lessons. They take her to occupational and physical therapy, to the mall and the grocery store. And to church.

Diane counts small steps to convince herself things are slowly improving. So what if Dani steals food off other people’s trays at McDonald’s? At least she can feed herself chicken nuggets now. So what if she has already been to the bathroom four times this morning? She’s finally out of diapers.

With the love and care the Lierows have provided, Dani has surpassed her teachers’ expectations, and not just in terms of speech. She seems to be learning to listen, and she understands simple commands. She pulls at her pants to show she needs to go to the bathroom, taps a juice box when she wants more. She can sit at a table for five-minute  stretches, and she’s starting to scoop applesauce with a spoon.

She’s down to just a few temper tantrums a month. She is learning to push buttons on a speaking board, to use symbols to show when she wants a book or when she’s angry. She’s learning it’s okay to be angry: You can deal with those feelings without biting your own hands.

Dani seems to talk most often when William is tickling her, as if something from her subconscious seeps out when she’s too distracted to shut it off. Her 11-year-old brother has heard her say, “Stop!” and “No!” He thought he even heard her say his name.

Having a brother just one year older provides joy and connection for Dani. William says Dani frightened him at first. “She did weird things.” But he always wanted someone to play with. He doesn’t care that she can’t ride bikes with him or play Monopoly. “I drive her around in my Jeep and she honks the horn,” he says. “She’s learning to match up cards and stuff.”

He couldn’t believe she had never walked a dog or licked an ice cream cone. He taught her how to play peekaboo, helped her squish Play-Doh through her fingers. He showed her it was safe to walk on sand and fun to blow bubbles and okay to cry; when you hurt, someone comes. He taught her how to open a present. How to pick up Tater Tots and dunk them into a mountain of ketchup.

Bernie hopes, one day, she might be able to call him “Daddy,” to get married or at least live on her own. But if that doesn’t happen, he says, “that’s okay too. For me, it’s all about getting the kisses and the hugs.”

For now, Bernie and Diane are content to give Dani what she never had before: comfort and stability, attention and affection. A trundle, a Gloworm. A family.

Now Bernie tips Dani into bed, smooths her golden hair across the pillow. “Night-night,” he says, kissing her forehead.

“Good night, honey,” Diane calls from the doorway.

William calls from down the hall. “Good night, Mom and Dad. Good night, Dani.”

Someday, the Lierows hope, she will answer.

»Update: One of God's Children

This article, winner of a 2009 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing on April 20, is ©2008 by Lane DeGregory, The St. Petersburg Times (July 31, '08). St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL  33731

Photo: Melissa Lyttle/ZUMA