Working in a state mental hospital, nineteen-year-old Tom Butterfield (Fredric Lehne), befriends an abandoned eight-year-old boy for whom authorities cannot find a foster family.
He added at the time of the telemovie's production, "I didn’t really start out twenty years ago with the intent to make a movie.
"[1] He continued to work in Los Angeles to raise funds for Butterfield Youth Services Inc., until being hospitalised on 15 November 1982 for acute pneumonia and respiratory problems.
He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on 13 December 1982 following a biopsy to clean out a congested lung, which caused his body to go into shock.
Pfeiffer would continue to appear on television in one-off performances of established programmes, but The Children Nobody Wanted was her final made-for-television movie and signified the end of her association with LaRocca.