PUYALLUP - There are stories we do, we never forget. There's people you remember -- maybe not their names.

I remember a mother meeting her 2-year-old son for the first time at the airport in Vancouver B.C.

Today that 2-year-old is almost 18. His name is Cody.

How do I know? Vicki Pfau e-mailed me about Cody and the other baby she and her husband at the time adopted from Romania.

"Amy is turning 16," Vicki told me.

The stories of Romanian orphans 16 years ago opened the hearts of so many Americans who went over to Romania to adopt. ABC's 20/20 broke the story. The images of the neglected and abandoned children broke Vicki's heart.

"No food, no formula, no heat, no medicine," says Vicki. That's how Cody and Amy started their lives.

"My life is good," says Amy, a freshman at Ballou Junior High in Puyallup. Her brother Cody is a junior at Emerald Ridge High School.

He wants his parents to know: "My parents don't know, but yeah, I thank God everyday. I don't say it. I think to myself every morning when I wake up. I'm lucky I'm not waking up in a dumpster," Cody says.

"If it wasn't for my mom and dad coming to get me, I wouldn't be here and I might be on the streets, or dead, " says Amy who was only 9 weeks old when she came to America.

I asked Amy if she felt lucky: "Very much so!"

Mom wants the world to know: "I was lucky. I was the lucky one".