Morgan Hill and her adoptive parents

CHICAGO — It’s hard to imagine what Morgan Hill is feeling right now. She’s not quite sure herself. How can you possibly process the fact you were born, wrapped in a towel, put into a trash bag and left in a dumpster to die — all before you were a day old?

Morgan’s parents told her that she was adopted when she was young, but didn’t give details. They knew she wanted to know more, and planned to tell her after high school graduation.

Nothing could’ve prepared her for the story they would tell.

Morgan’s mother, Sandi, tried to find strength to have the conversation she’d been preparing for for years.

“She could barely get it out,” Morgan said. “She was basically already crying before telling me.”

Morgan’s biological mother had hidden her pregnancy, delivered quietly at home and then tried to get rid of the baby so no one would know.

Morgan learned she’d been found in a dumpster, tied up in a trash bag double knotted at the top.

She’d been left to die.

“I honestly didn’t know what to think when she was telling me,” said Morgan. “She had the binder of articles and just had me read through all of them.”

Sandi had kept as many articles as she could throughout the early years of Morgan’s life. She’d done so for this moment.

Morgan read all of them.

She read how a construction worker named Garold Hyatt — known to his friends as Rocky — found her while taking a last load out to the dumpster. He heard a whimper. And then heard it again. The compilation of articles all described the same thing. He moved closer to the sound and then saw a white trash bag twitch. He got nervous and ran to the nearby hospital for help.

Three nurses came running. One of them, Carol Szafranski, opened the bag and saw a healthy, blue-eyed baby girl inside.

The multitude of articles described how nurses named her Mary Grace, how authorities caught her biological mother, who was sitting in jail awaiting a trial, and how her biological father never even knew there was a baby until the mother named him in court.

Until the week of April 17, everything Morgan knew about her dramatic first days of life came from newspaper articles.

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