Woman is in shock in the US today after recognizing her long-lost brother

Marcella found her brother Tommy after seeing a USA TODAY article about an unknown patient at a Los Angeles hospital.
A fingerprint test confirmed Tommy’s identity and Marcella thanks a Lassen County sheriff’s deputy and USA TODAY for their help.
Marcella hopes Tommy’s story will encourage hospitals to use fingerprint testing to identify unknown patients.

For 25 long years, a California woman named Marcella knew that there was a slim chance that her little brother was still alive. But she never stopped looking.

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

Although he looked completely different, the help of a tireless officer and a fingerprint test confirmed it was Tommy two and a half decades after his disappearance.

“We were convinced he was dead. We all believed he was dead because of his diabetes. How could he help himself?” Marcella told USA TODAY in an exclusive interview on Monday. “I’m still in shock.”

Marcella, 59, said their long-awaited reunion will take place once she is able to leave her home in Northern California and travel south to the Los Angeles area.

Tommy was reported missing in Idaho in 1999

Tommy was last heard from on July 31, 1999, when he called Marcella from a pay phone at a rest stop in the southern Idaho town of Twin Falls. Police later told her that Tommy’s van had been spotted in Yellowstone National Park but had not been 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 about unidentified remains. She also frequently searched for unknown hospital patients in Washington, Idaho, Northern California and Northern Nevada. During this time, she also sought support from nonprofit groups such as the Nor-Cal Alliance For The Missing.

“I never thought he would still live in LA,” Marcella said. “How could he be alive? He didn’t use his health card. No one has found their vehicle.”

Over time, Marcella’s desperation took its toll as she became irritated when people suggested he might still be alive.

“It annoyed me because I hated it when people said to me, ‘He could still be alive somewhere.’ It pissed me off,” she said, adding that she had given up hope.

From a Facebook post to a suitable fingerprint test

Initially unsure whether the man in the USA TODAY story was her brother, due in part to an inaccurate description of his eye color by nurses, Marcella said she later decided to include the man’s photo from the article along with a picture she had. to be published on Facebook by Tommy. The post was flooded with comments calling on her to “burn this trail to the ground.”

And so in November she called the hospital and confirmed that the “John Doe” patient was an insulin-dependent diabetic, just like Tommy. She then contacted the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office and received an immediate response from Sheriff’s Deputy Derek Kennemore.

Kennemore was very interested in helping Marcella throughout the identification process, for which she said she is forever grateful. He confirmed to hospital staff that the patient resembled her brother. Marcella later tried to communicate with him via FaceTime, but the attempt failed due to poor reception. She ended up sending photos of her daughter and Tommy’s late father when staff noticed a visceral reaction on his face and he mumbled something that sounded like “Oh my God.”

A fingerprint test later confirmed it was Tommy, and Marcella was overjoyed that she was wrong. She said she is forever grateful to Kennemore for his hard work and to USA TODAY for publishing the story.

“I told him you are my hero. And it just sounded so stupid and Disney, but he did so much,” she said. “I just called my stepdad and he said, ‘I’ll be damned.’ And my daughter, who has never met him, said, “You did it, Mom, you found it,” because I was looking. And then my other daughter said, ‘I’m so proud of you for not giving up.'”

During her years-long search, she said, “I just switched off.”

“I hate to say it, but that’s how it is with most missing people I find out. So it’s not like I take it personally,” she said. “You don’t get much coverage, so thank God you posted this article. All they had to do was call investigators to do a quick fingerprint scan.”

“I was always his protector”

After 25 years, Marcella said all the Los Angeles police had to do was conduct a simple fingerprint test to confirm her brother was alive. She emphasized how she hopes fingerprint testing will become standard procedure when hospitals have unidentifiable patients.

“I never stopped trying,” she said. “It’s just crazy. It would be crazy enough to find a John Doe to portray him dead, but bring him to life 25 years later. Incredible.”

Woman is in shock in the US today after recognizing her long-lost brother

ByAmelia Journalton

By Amelia Journalton

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