After the execution of Ceaucescu and the 1989 revolution, the news flashed images of the dire situation in the Romanian orphanages. The inhumane conditions caused by the oppressive regime, shocked the world – a world unprepared for the sudden end of the Cold War. The post-communist state was marked by crime and corruption. Each did what was right in their own eyes. Into this situation, Aurica was born.

Children are supposed to be cherished gifts of promise for the future. Romania very much needed Aurica and her generation to bring a youthful change to the stagnant country. But Aurica's parents did not consider her to be their hope for a better future. They abandoned Aurica in the maternity hospital immediately after she was born. The hospital never even made a birth certificate for Aurica. She never officially existed.

In the hospital, this non-existence was perpetuated. There Aurica acquired the AIDS virus from an unclean syringe. So she was never placed in an orphanage. Instead, when the doctors discovered her condition, they sent her to the hospital for infectious diseases. There she was raised along with 20 other children by untrained and underpaid nurses.

Aurica's heartless parents abandoned her at birth. The heartless medical staff infected her with the deadly disease and resigned Aurica to a hopeless fate. Thankfully, there came into her life someone who had a heart – a heart of a child. The Heart of the Child Foundation arranged to take Aurica out of the hospital for the first time in her life. When she was nine years old, Aurica was placed in foster family care.

Heart of the Child believed that Aurica was a gift to a country in transition. They believed that she could be part of a generation of change. And they were right. Heart of the Child gave her a place where she could exist as a child and where she could grow up. There they discovered that Aurica is very sociable and witty. If the electricity goes out, as it often does in Romania , Aurica is enough to light up the room. Heart of the Child found that, though once a victim of the heartless, Aurica is the epitome of the heart of a child.