Amy Cubbage’s first foray into parenthood began as it had for tens of thousands of American families before her: in a hotel room in China.

In 2008, Ms. Cubbage and her husband, Graham Troop, had just been handed a 2-year-old girl named Qin Shuping, who was living with a foster family in the southern Chinese city of Guilin. The couple from Louisville, Ky., had waited more than two years to be matched with a child.

But in that hotel room, in a country the couple had never been to before, the toddler was inconsolable.

“I cried because I was like, ‘What have we done to this child?’” Ms. Cubbage recalled.

More than fifteen years later, the toddler is now known as June Cubbage-Troop, a freshman at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh who is on the acrobatics and tumbling team.

“I used to think about my birth parents, but not really anymore because I’m happy and I love my parents,” Ms. Cubbage-Troop, 18, said. “I’m pretty content with my life.”