An Angel In Navajo County

(CBS)  CBS Correspondent Steve Hartman throws a dart at a map of the U.S., and wherever it lands is where he goes to get a story. Once there, he picks a person at random from the phone book. In a story that first aired in 1999, Hartman learns about a little Angel in Navajo County, Arizona.

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Navajo County is high above the deserts and cactus of Arizona's lower valley. The people who live here say it's that much closer to heaven. And once you know this story, you may just agree.

Lavelle Johle lives on the White Mountain Apache Indian reservation. A devout Catholic, she almost became a nun but decided she'd try and be a superior mother instead. She's now divorced and living with her oldest daughter, Jan, and her youngest, a 7-year-old named Angel.

"If they were to say, pick one person in your whole life that you've known to be called Angel, and really mean it, it would be her," Lavelle says.

The angel arrived on a Saturday afternoon, cloudy, cold and crowded. Just about the whole town was at a basketball court for a big tournament. They were all yelling inside. And some time that night, out in the parking lot, someone wrapped a baby girl no more than six hours old in a light blanket and left her in the back of the medicine man's pick-up truck.

"I just had to pray that baby will make it, survive," remembers police officer David Johns, who was at the game. He rushed the abandoned baby to the nearest hospital where Lavelle was working as a nurse's assistant, although not in pediatrics. "I was supposed to be on that side," says Lavelle, pointing to another section of the hospital.

So what was she doing in pediatrics?

"I was persuaded," she says.

There was something about that baby. "That first touch. And it wasn't me touching her. She touched me first. I said to myself, 'God, whatever it takes, I'll fight for this little girl,'" Lavelle says.

Six weeks later, the court gave Lavelle temporary custody. Two years later, she adopted her.

No one ever found out where the little girl came from, although someone at the game suggested maybe an angel brought her. The name stuck.

Now, if you're wondering how she feels about all this, well, that's actually the most amazing part.

"She asked, and I always said I would tell her when she did ask," Lavelle recalls. "And I said, 'Angel, I wish I was the one to give you birth, but I wasn't.' She just gives me a hug and walks off. She goes, 'oh.'"

She had a different idea of what a mother is than Lavelle.

"She did," Lavelle says. "She taught me a lot. That little girl gives big lessons."

But she says the biggest lesson of all is the one Angel teaches every day without saying a word. Look into her face, Lavelle says, and you can't identify any particular race. She could be part Apache, Hispanic, part white or Asian.

And even though Lavelle's roots run deep in this country, she sees her daughter as the ultimate American.

"It's an advantage because she can't really be prejudiced," Lavelle says.

A prerequisite, I'm sure, for every angel.