55 Years Later, Woman Abandoned As Baby Reunited With Family Who Found Her

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Last month, WCCO shared the happy ending to the story of a baby left in a cardboard box outside a St. Paul hospital on Christmas Eve -- a story some 50 years in the making. As it turns out, there's much more to it than we knew.

Related: 'You Become Complete': Separated Siblings Share Story Of Reunion

Tammy Makram was abandoned in 1961. In the last year, she not only located her birth parents, but nine brothers and sisters she never knew existed. Now, Makram knows the family that found her just in time -- and WCCO was there for the emotional reunion.

They thought about the baby girl who made the papers that Christmas every year since. When Makram told us her story last month, a certain woman watching flashed back to those headlines.

"All of the sudden it hit me -- 'Oh my god, it's the baby my parents found,'" Bobbi Fischbein said.

She gave birth to her first son, Billy, the afternoon of Christmas Eve in 1961. Her parents would visit St. Paul's old Miller Hospital a few hours later. Small cries in the mostly vacant parking lot would catch their attention.

"She hears the baby crying and she just kept walking up and down, back and forth through the rows of cars until she found it," Fischbein said.

Under a canvas canopy far from the hospital's entrance and exposed to the cold was a cardboard box with a small blanket on top and a baby inside.

"My mom was absolutely screaming," Fischbein said.

Doctors told them had they arrived 10 minutes later, it would have been too late.

"Yes, she would have been dead," Fischbein said.

On the day they would celebrate their son's birthday, the Fischbeins always wondered what happened to Baby Holly, the name nurses gave her upon her holiday discovery.

This Christmas, Fischbein would be able to fill in the blanks in person.

"I'm excited, I'm nervous, I'm emotional, all of those things," Fischbein said.

Baby Holly -- now Tammy Makram -- wanted to hear about the people that started her story.

"Without them you wouldn't be here. So we're fortunate and lucky," Fischbein said.

Makram had no idea how lucky until now.

"Had I not been found very quickly my life would have been very different or maybe not at all," Makram said.

She went on to be adopted by a loving family in Luverne and have a son of her own. In the last year, online searches led her to a sister who was abandoned in a Minneapolis apartment building four years after her and to three other siblings from the same mom, as well as five more from the same dad. They came to find out their birth father was living a double life.

"Yeah, it's a lot to think about but I feel very blessed," Makram said.

It's a feeling she wants more families to experience. She wants to dedicate her time now to helping others find answers.

"An absolute miracle," Fischbein said. "She's a miracle."

"You know what it is? It's peaceful. It's peaceful," she said.

In 1961 it would have been illegal to abandon a baby at a hospital and Makram's mother would have faced charges. Now, a safe haven law in Minnesota states a baby can be left with a hospital employee up to three days old without the mom facing consequences.