In an amazing turn of events, a nine-year-old boy profoundly changes the lives of four adults and a lonely dog in the course of one day. It's the day before Christmas, and in a desperate attempt to remove him from a violent living situation, his aunt puts him on the Greyhound to Reno to live with the father he has never met. With nothing more than a few belongings and a note with his father's phone number pinned to his shirt, his aunt bids him a tearful farewell. When he gets to Reno, he discovers his father, a Vietnam vet, to be a raging alcoholic with a living situation even worse than the one the boy left behind. The father insists that the boy is not even his son and threatens him if he does not leave at once and not come back. The boy, heartbroken, is convinced nobody wants him, and the only option left to him is to spend Christmas at the police station; that is until the Greyhound driver and a cafe waitress come up with a better idea. In the process of them being so anxious to help him, they realize that in so doing, he has inadvertently enriched their lives beyond measure.