Helen Knox was just a few hours old when she was abandoned in a cardboard box.
On a cold, frosty morning in December 1988, baby Helen was discovered outside a hospital with no sign of who had left her there.
After being nursed back to health a couple saw the story on the local news and agreed to adopt her - with her new parents giving the foundling a happy upbringing.
Helen, 32, is now engaged wth two children of her own, but has always struggled with not knowing anything about her very beginning and biological parents.
"I don't know what the first few hours of my life were like, where I was and who I was with, who left me there," she explains on tonight's Long Lost Family: Born Without A Trace.
For the very first time, anxious Helen makes an emotional journey to visit the hospital in Chesterfield where she was found.
"I just know that I was found in a cardboard box with a case wrapped around me. It was around 9:30 am in the morning," she says while standing outside the hospital.
"It's cold now in November so it must have been freezing. Even though the building has changed I can see what would have happened."
Wiping away tears, Helen adds: "Knowing that, somebody, maybe my birth parents were here. And they left me here. It must have been a horrible reason for them to do it."
When Helen was 11, her parents told her the story behind her adoption and explained they were thrilled when the hospital phoned to say they could take her home.
Helen still treasures the keepsakes the hospital gave her, including the name tag she was given as a baby for 'Gill Scarsdale'.
The name was devised from nurse, Gillian, who looked after her and the hospital where she was left outside.
Helen also has an incredible photo of her taken with three of the maternity nurses who looked after her in those earliest of days.
"I don't know what the first few hours of my life were like, where I was and who I was with, who left me there," she explains.
"If she was a young girl, scared on her own with nobody to turn to, that's fine. I just want to make sure you're OK and know where I come from. It's hard to not know anything at all."
The Long Lost Family team begin their search and and they find two of the nurses who looked after Helen as a baby.
After 32 years, Helen is reunited with Gill and Susan, who say they never forgot about the day she was found.
It's a very emotional meeting as they share their memories of Helen's first days, but she is still left with burning questions.
"It was fantastic to see them. They looked exactly the same 32 years later. They gave me lots of love, care and attention," she says.
"It's nice to known I wasn't just put into a room or cot. I was looked after. It's reassuring."
Helen also discovers she was left in sight of the maternity ward, so whoever left her wanted her to be found immediately by the right people.
She adds: "I feel different now. I feel at ease. Whoever left me there thought about it. 'Where's the safest place to leave her and to be found quickly'. They wanted the best for me and I did have the best."
Within the same episode, the team are looking into another baby who was also abandoned in Chesterfield 18 months before Helen.
Victoria Vardy was left in a bag in a department stairwell just a few hundred metres from where Helen was found.
Only a handful of babies are abandoned each year in the UK, so with two baby girls left in close proximity in the same town and with only a year-and-a-half between them, the team investigate whether there could be a connection.
What they uncover takes everyone by surprise and ultimately one of the most emotional reunions in the programme's history.
They discover that the girls are not related, but Helen's DNA is matched with a half-sister who is also a foundling.
Jess was found in a completely different part of the country 14 months before Helen and they share a birth mother, who is still alive and was young when she had the girls.
To add complexity to the situation, Jess had heard rumours about the identity of her birth mother but did not know for certain until the DNA test confirmed it.
"It was just an instant shock. I could not believe I have a sister. It's incredible," says Jess, who was left next to the road in a nappy and 12-18 month vest on with a carrier bag underneath.
"It never crossed my mind that any sibling would be a foundling. I still can't get my head around it."
There are extraordinary similarities as Jess has one child from a previous relationship and another with her fiancé, which is exactly the same as Helen.
Jess is not desperate for a relationship with her birth mother but wants to meet younger half-sister Helen, who bursts into tears when she finds out the news.
After taking Covid tests, the sisters meet safely during an incredibly heartwarming first meeting which is full of tears.
The long lost siblings share their stories of growing up, swap family photos and discover even more amazing similarities in what has been labelled the show's most emotional reunion ever.
* Long Lost Family Born Without Trace is on tonight, tomorrow night and Wednesday night at 9pm on ITV
