The life of 10-year-old Sylvia is limited to living on the beach of Santa Cruz, California, sleeping under cardboard boxes at night and surviving each day by begging and stealing from unsuspecting tourists and selling miniature sand dollars to vendors on the boardwalk that she finds on the beach. When she is traumatized after witnessing her drunken father strangle her prostitute mother on the beach one night, a young couple from Oregon take pity on the little girl and take her home with them to raise her as their own. Fifteen years later they receive a disturbing telephone call form a stranger, demanding an unreasonable ransom with the threat of taking Sylvia's life if they don't give in to his demands. This is the beginning of a series of events that will alter her life forever.