An Orlando woman moved by a television report and a hole in her soul plucked him from a Romanian orphanage brimming with garbage and apathy.

He had a shaven head, piercing brown eyes, and white spots streaking across his thighs where injections of sedatives had scarred him.

Soon he was thousands of miles from the smoldering reality of revolution, living in a safe, sun-drenched city where people only have to step through theme-park gates to experience lands of make-believe.

Day by day, the waif grew into Nick Simon, a suntanned Florida boy eager to catch up on years of missed chocolate bars and loving hugs.

In June, more than a decade after he left the orphanage, Nick stumbled upon a 20/20 TV special that captured his interest. ABC correspondent Tom Jarriel had returned to Romania to see if anything had changed for the orphans since his eye-opening 1990 report. It had: Thousands, now in their late teens and early 20s, were living in the sewers. Waves of haunting memories washed over Nick.

He searched the despairing faces of children -- once warehoused, now turned out on the streets -- staring, knowing. Knowing among the faces might be children with whom he shared a crib and a cry.

Knowing among those faces were children certain to barter their bodies to survive, sniff glue as an escape, die lonely deaths from AIDS. Knowing his face could have been among those flashed in a blur across a 32-inch television screen.

But he knew, most of all, something must be done. And so it was that a grass-roots campaign, "Backpack Carepak," a drive to collect and send winterwear and hygiene products in gently-used or new backpacks to street urchins in Bucharest was born in the heart of a 16-year-old native son.

"What really struck me," he says, "was, like, `Whoa! Hold up a second. They're living in the streets now? I was lucky to get out of there at the time that I did. I could have been one of these kids living in the streets. Not enough people are speaking out for the kids out there that need help."

Nick slides into a cramped booth at Panera Bread near Lake Eola on a recent afternoon and regards his lunch: tuna on honey wheat, Greek salad, a Pepsi.

With his nut-brown mop, bushy eyebrows, and an elongated face that narrows to a rounded "V" at the chin, Nick could pass for the shy, boyish cog in a boy band -- if he were shy. Truth be told, Hollywood is where his head is. Already he has appeared as an extra in films and starred as Jesus in a Godspell production.

He likes his girls cute and speaks the lingo. As Nick puts it, he is, "out there," which is, apparently, something desirable, in the way that bad means good.

By all appearances, Nick is your average red-blooded, American teenager. Nothing like the 51/2-year-old who came to America unacquainted with Santa Claus. He stabs at his feta, looks up glassy-eyed.

"I still have dreams of Romania," he volunteers.

Sometimes when he sleeps, he says, his mind paints Jackson Pollocks, scored by Rambo.
Flashes of white, blue, red.
Dogs barking.
Guns rat-a-tat-tatting.
Sirens screeching across his mind.

It was only later, when the woman he would come to call Mama told him the story behind his coming to Orlando, that Nick would tie his dreams to the revolution in 1989 that swirled around Orphanage No. 4.

A SILENCE THAT SCREAMS

It began in the summer of 1990, when Connie Simon, then a teacher at Howard Middle School in Orlando, traveled to Romania to distribute 14 boxes filled with toys, clothes, and medical supplies gathered by students, staff and others moved by a 20/20 segment on Romanian orphans.

The report pried the lid off a secret shame, born of the tyrannical 25-year reign of Nicolae Ceausescu. In an effort to swell the Romanian population, he banned birth control and abortions and heavily fined couples that produced fewer than four children.

Unable to care for the offspring, many parents handed them over to the state. According to estimates, about 100,000 children languished in Romanian institutions.

When the government fell in December 1989, Ceausescu was overthrown and executed.

The misery didn't die with him.

Even braced for conditions she had heard were common at the orphanages, Simon had to steady herself at the odor blasting into her nostrils. The heat concentrated the stench of diapers, changed -- if at all -- once a day. It happened like this: children with sticky legs sat stacked on trays like loaves of bread, changed in one fell swoop.

More than the smell, what struck her about this particular orphanage was the silence. Wards of tiny creatures stared blankly through bars in cribs, or rocked, rocked, rocked on filthy bare pads. Children with bloated bellies and babies crawling with lice had learned not to cry. Rarely would their screams move a caretaker to dab at their tears.

Simon delivered the care packages to the Spitalul Children's Hospital and several orphanages. At the orphanages, children buzzed about her as if she were the queen bee. One child swooped down on a pink bunny, wetting its fur with kisses.

Simon returned home to Orlando, changed. She knew what she had to do.

HUG MELTS AWAY BLEAKNESS

In late October 1990, Simon again was bound for Romania.

She and her husband, Paul, in their early 40s at the time, had tried and failed to adopt children in the states. Five times, the same thing. It was as if the children were ice -- when the Simons believed they were grasping something solid, the children slipped like water through their fingers.

On her first trip to Romania, Simon became smitten with a 2-year-old named Ana and started the adoption paperwork.

But soon her optimism faded like the black-and-white snapshot of the brown-haired little girl.

Simon found the red tape virtually impenetrable. Each court appearance brought disappointment and more frustration. Each judge she appeared before had his own rules for signing off on the adoption. That she spoke little Romanian didn't help.

Complicating matters, Simon was under a deadline: She had been in Romania for several weeks and with an airlines strike looming, she was booked on the last flight out of Bucharest before Christmas.

At least she had tried, she thought.

As one door seemed to slam shut, another opened. An interpreter, aware of her dead-ends with Ana, told her about a slight boy at Orphanage No. 4.

Simon visited the place. The building was old, frigid. Inside there were no toys. Outside packs of wild dogs roamed. The children slept in military cots. They shared a bathroom with rusty showers and two sinks.

After a while, Simon and the boy she came to meet were brought together, two strangers in the strangest of places. His father was dead and his mother was poor. His aunts, uncles, and cousins lived in a commune outside of Bucharest.

The child, in a sweater, long stockings, and knitted pants, reacted the only way he could: he ran as fast as he could over to Simon, snaked his arms around just under her waist and squeezed.

Within the week, the boy she called Nick was gorging on chocolates on a flight bound for Orlando.

Nick was miles away from speaking English, save for the words, "chocolate" and "Mickey." And this: Her son could say mama.

DISCOVERING TIRE TREADS

After a while, when the newness rubbed away, the Simons confronted some unpleasant realities.

An institutionalized child -- one who had been warehoused virtually all his life without an encouraging word, without love -- was going to bear scars.

The first night he spent in his room, Nick stripped the sheets and ignored the pillow -- luxuries he had never had. He spent nights haunting the hallway, snacking on bowls of sugar.

Precious few things came naturally to him. He knew how to march and salute -- the orphans were groomed to be crack soldiers -- and when placed in a bathtub, Nick would grab a cloth and buff the chrome.

Since he had never seen a toy, he had to learn how to play.

Since he was rarely allowed to venture beyond the crib, he had to learn to explore. Once at school, teachers found Nick under a school bus, weaving his fingers through the tire treads.

Since he spoke scant English, the Simons hired a Romanian interpreter so they might better communicate with their son. This did little good. Few of the words Nick spoke were Romanian, at all. He spoke "orphan language," a tongue indecipherable to all but the discarded children, their private way of connecting.

And connecting, the Simons discovered, would prove the hardest thing of all. All his years without meaningful contact robbed Nick of a precious gift: He did not know how to bond.

Intensive sessions at a special attachment therapy center in Colorado taught him to trust, to give and receive love, to be a son.

Gradually, the son the Simons had imagined he would be emerged.

Nick Simon: the boy who is out there.

BEGGING IS ALL THEY KNOW

Not a speck of feta remains on Nick's plate. As the conversation progressed, Nick ate all his veggies.

Finished reliving the past, he draws the conversation to the present, the future.

Yet, for the kinsman he wishes to help, today and tomorrow are inextricably rooted in their hellish past.

Nick was but one of thousands of Romanian orphans rescued by Americans who had seen Jarriel's first report. Many Americans contributed money and other assistance. But many saw adoption as the most expeditious way to save the children. Simon returned to Romania in early 1992, and after a tortuous four-week ordeal, brought home the brown-haired girl in the fading photograph.

Like Nick and Ana (who is now known as Liana), many children left Romania snacking on chocolates at 30,000 feet.

Below, others remained behind in a tangle of red tape and despair, foraging for food in the garbage.

Nearly 11 years have passed since the broadcast that inspired Nick's adoption. But time, in his homeland, stood still. In the recent 20/20 follow-up, Jarriel reported that despite the American adoptions, tens of thousands of other orphans -- from newborns to teenagers -- remain neglected, sheltered in crumbling state-run housing.

Worse, about 4,000 of the children who lived in orphanages in 1990 now live in the street or huddle like rats in the sewers and steam tunnels of Bucharest.

It's the closest thing to family most have ever had.

They spend their days hustling for food, often engaging in casual sex. When meals are scarce, they turn to plastic bags filled with glue, inhale deeply, and sniff hunger away.

Nick pounds his fist on the table at the thought, searching for the right words. "These are kids my age and younger, living in the street, not knowing how to take care of themselves. All they know how to do is beg . . ." His voice trails off, his face stiff, burdened.

The Romanian government, he says, finishing his thought, "should have done something to help. I want to make a difference, help them be able to live, and show them there are people out there who do care they're living in the sewers."

Nick knows even a planeload of backpacks will do precious little to solve a decades old problem. But he is pragmatic: a sweatshirt and woolen socks can offer a street urchin a bit of comfort during the harsh Romanian winter.

So far, about 25 backpacks have been collected at Community Presbyterian Church in Celebration.

Each backpack, in addition to clothing and supplies, will carry a photograph of the donor, Nick says, so that the child who receives the backpack "can look at the picture and say, `these are the people who care about me.' Thinking about that gives me the goose bumps."

In the works is a benefit concert, featuring up-and-coming groups like Exact and Olive Carpet. The price of admission: a fully loaded backpack. The concert is tentatively scheduled for December, though Bruce Timmons, a co-producer at Nemours Marketing in Orlando, who is organizing the event, says a venue is under negotiation.

The plan: ship the backpacks to Romania after the concert.

Nick hopes the project catches fire and spreads to other poor countries. He hopes to establish a foundation to aid Romania.

But those plans are the future. Right now, his mind is focused elsewhere.

Time has eroded most of his memories of the past, and smoothed the rough edges of the jagged pieces that litter his dreams. What remains is a clear impression of who he is.
"I'm Romanian-American," Nick says.

UPDATE: ALL supplies were safely delivered to streetkids living in the canals of Bucharest by movie producer, Jeff Deane, film director, Jonathan Figg, and actor, Jon Tindle.

Sue and Ron Bates of inasmuch foundation helped distribute supplies to needy kids.