For years, Marcella Nasseri searched for the remains of her brother, who she believed had died after he mysteriously disappeared in Doyle, Calif., 25 years ago.
Now, Ms. Nasseri’s brother, who vanished in August 1999, has been found and identified in the Los Angeles area and is being reunited with his family, the authorities announced on Tuesday.
It all started when Ms. Nasseri saw an article in USA Today from May that asked the public for help identifying a patient who had been found sitting on a curb in south Los Angeles nearly a month before. He had been staying at emergency facilities including St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood near Long Beach, Calif., for weeks.
The article, which explained that the patient could not communicate, included a photo of the man — with gray hair and blue eyes, believed to be in his mid-60s — lying in a hospital bed.
Ms. Nasseri believed the patient was her missing brother, Tommy. She added an undated photograph of her brother as a younger man in a GoFundMe post earlier this week. Tommy had more dark hair than the man in the hospital bed but his arched eyebrows, rounded nose and deep-set eyes showed a resemblance between the two.
In an attempt to have her inclination confirmed or denied, Ms. Nasseri contacted the local authorities. Derek Kennemore, the deputy sheriff of Lassen County in Northern California, then pushed for a detective with the Missing Persons Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department to obtain the fingerprints of the unidentified patient, according to a statement from the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office.
“The Detective was able to positively identify the man as the one reported missing in 1999 from Doyle,” the statement said.
St. Francis Medical Center, the county sheriff and Ms. Nasseri did not respond to requests for comment. Tommy’s condition and how he disappeared were not immediately clear.
“He just VANISHED with no trace,” Ms. Nasseri said in her post. “Not even his vehicle was ever located.”
Now, the two are working to be reunited. Ms. Nasseri lives in Lassen County, about 600 miles north of Lynwood, Calif., where her brother is staying. For the cost of a possible medical transfer as well as items like men’s clothing, pencils and paper so he can draw, Ms. Nasseri sought $500 in donations on the crowdsourcing site.
After two days, the page had raised nearly $7,000.
Some of the money, Ms. Nasseri said, would also go to buy her brother a device so he could listen to some of the songs that she remembers him loving — including one especially prescient tune by Cyndi Lauper.
“If you’re lost you can look and you will find me,” Ms. Lauper sings in one of the tunes that appeared on Tommy’s list. “Time after time.”
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