Exclusive: Woman thought long-lost brother was dead. Then she saw his face in Paste BN

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For a long 25 years, a California woman named Marcella knew the odds were low that her little brother was still alive. But she never stopped looking.

When a friend sent her a Paste BN article in May that sought to identify a nonverbal patient at a Los Angeles County hospital, she couldn't believe it. Marcella, who wanted to go only by her first name, read the story and looked closely at a photo of her long-lost brother Tommy.

Although he looked drastically different, the help of a relentless officer and a fingerprint test confirmed it was Tommy, 2 ½ decades after he went missing.

"We were convinced he was dead. All of us believed he was dead, and just because of his diabetes. How could he help himself?" Marcella told Paste BN on Monday in an exclusive interview. "I am still in shock."

Marcella, 59, said their long-awaited reunion will happen once she can leave her Northern California home and travel south to the Los Angeles area.

Tommy was reported missing in 1999 in Idaho

Tommy was last heard from on July 31, 1999, when he called Marcella from a payphone at a truck stop in the southern Idaho city of Twin Falls. Law enforcement later told her that Tommy's van was spotted at Yellowstone National Park but could no longer be found.

She feared the worst, that someone had killed him and taken his van. She said she spent years looking at reports of dead men and communicating with officials regarding unidentified remains. She also frequently searched for unidentified hospital patients in Washington, Idaho, Northern California and northern Nevada. Throughout this time she also sought support from nonprofit groups like the Nor-Cal Alliance For The Missing.

"I never dreamed he'd be alive in LA," Marcella said. "How could he be alive? He hasn't used his medical card. Nobody's found his vehicle."

Over time the despair took a toll on Marcella as she found herself irritated when people suggested he could be alive.

"It annoyed me because I hated it when people would tell me, 'Well he could be alive somewhere.' It pissed me off," she said, adding that she had given up hope.

From a Facebook post to a matching fingerprint test

Uncertain at first whether the man in the Paste BN story was her brother, partially because of an inaccurate description of his eye color by nurses, Marcella said she later decided to post the photo of the man from the article on Facebook alongside a picture she had of Tommy. The post became flooded by comments urging her to "burn this lead to the ground."

And so in November she called the hospital and confirmed the "John Doe" patient was an insulin-dependent diabetic, just like Tommy. Then she contacted the Lassen County Sheriff's Office and swiftly received a response from Sheriff’s Deputy Derek Kennemore.

Kennemore took a strong interest in helping Marcella throughout the identification process, something she said she is forever grateful for. He confirmed with hospital staff that the patient resembled her brother. Marcella later tried to communicate with him through FaceTime but the attempt failed due to poor reception. Eventually, she sent over photos of her daughter and Tommy's deceased father when staff noted a visceral reaction on his face and him muttering what sounded like "Oh my god."

A fingerprint test later confirmed it was Tommy, overjoying Marcella that she had been wrong. She said she's now forever grateful to Kennemore for his hard work and Paste BN for posting the story.

"I told him, you're my hero. And it just sounded so stupid and Disney, but he did so much," she said. "I just called my stepdad, first of all, and he says, 'I'll be darned.' And my daughter, who's never met him, said 'You did it, Mom, you did it. Oh my God, you found him' because I've been looking. And then my other daughter said, 'I am so proud of you for not giving up.'"

She said that during her yearslong search, "I just shut down."

"I hate to say that, but that's the way it is with most missing people I'm finding out. So it's not like I'm taking it personal," she said. "They don't get a lot of coverage, so thank God you posted that article. All they had to do was call in the detectives to do a quick fingerprint scan." 

'I've always been his protector'

After 25 years, Marcella said all it took was for the Los Angeles Police Department to do a simple fingerprint test to confirm that her brother was alive. She emphasized how strongly she hopes for fingerprint tests to become the default procedure when hospitals have unidentifiable patients.

"I've never stopped trying," she said. "It's just crazy. It would be crazy enough to find a John Doe that was him dead, but to bring him alive 25 years (later). Unbelievable."

Marcella said their family has gone through several tragedies over the years, making Tommy's discovery extra comforting. In 1984, her father died in a motorcycle accident on his way to work. Her sister Sherrie was killed in a 1990 car accident and in 2021 her mother died of heatstroke following the devastating Dixie Fire. Now she said she is grateful to look him in his eyes and talk to her brother.

"When I look in those eyes, I feel that older sister protectiveness," she said. "I've always been his protector."