It’s a Thanksgiving miracle for one California family after a man who went missing in 1999 was found 25 years later when his sister saw a photo of him in an online article, authorities said.
The man who has been missing since August of 1999 was found sitting on a curb in Los Angeles earlier this year, according to a GoFundMe page created by the man’s older sister to raise funds for a medical transfer.
“He just VANISHED with no trace. Not even his vehicle was ever located,” the man’s sister said in the GoFundMe post. “All this time I had been looking for unidentified remains. I was delighted to find him alive!”
The woman had contacted the Lassen County Sheriff’s Department on Friday to say that she believed a man featured in an online article was her missing brother, the sheriff’s department said in a Facebook post.
The USA Today article, published in May, was a request for the public to help identify a nonverbal man who was hospitalized in Lynwood, California. The man had been found in South Los Angeles on April 15, according to medical officials cited in the article.
The woman, whose name has not been released by the sheriff’s department to protect family privacy, told Deputy Derek Kennemore that her brother was reported missing in 1999 from Doyle, a small California town about 45 miles northwest of Reno, Nevada. She had not heard from him since.
