Father and Child Reunion : Shared Dream Becomes Reality After 22-Year Separation

For 22 years, Arthur S. Miller searched for his daughter Natalie. He hired private detectives. He called the FBI. He sent letters with a simple plea to his former wife, who had taken the girl away.

“Please, just let me see my daughter,” the Oxnard businessman begged.

There was no response. The letters were returned, address unknown. Seeing her again seemed out of reach--until last month, when Miller’s daughter, Natalie Hobbelen, now 26, found him after traveling halfway around the world.

“I was in shock,” Miller said. “Twenty-two years passed before my eyes. It’s absolutely awesome. To this moment, I’m the happiest man alive.”

Every year, thousands of children disappear. Many are pawns in bitter marital battles. Some are reunited with their fathers or mothers. Others are not.

Miller and Hobbelen consider themselves lucky.

“Ever since I was a girl I would dream about my father,” Hobbelen said. “I would imagine how he would look, what he was like. He’s everything I thought he would be and more. It’s a dream come true.”

When Hobbelen was 2, her parents divorced and she was moved by her mother from their home in Granada Hills to Northern California. For a couple of years, Miller was allowed to see the child.

Then Hobbelen’s mother remarried and, without warning, she moved with her daughter and new husband to Australia. They left no forwarding address. Other family members were told not to tell Miller where they had gone.

With the help of a friend in the FBI, Miller tracked his daughter to Australia. He located her twice with the help of other federal officials, but his ex-wife moved both times as soon as she received letters from Miller asking to see his daughter.

His next step was to hire an Australian attorney, who spent 18 months searching for the family before again locating them. But as soon as Miller had sent another letter, his ex-wife moved again.

In the years that followed, there were other detectives and other attempts to reach his daughter. Miller finally tracked her once again and sent another letter to his ex-wife at yet another address.

This time he modified his plea: “Just do me one favor, just send me pictures of Natalie and let me know how she’s doing.”

Again, no response.

“I can understand that they wanted to start a new life,” Miller said. “We all go through that. But you don’t take a child away from someone like that. It’s the worst sin in the world.”

Miller said before he went to bed at night, he would stop to gaze at the moon.

“It was comfort to know that within a few hours she would be looking at the same moon,” Miller said.

Miller said he made a vow to never stop searching for his daughter, but he knew that he had to proceed carefully.

“If I made contact, the mother would up and move again,” Miller said. “I didn’t want that to happen.”

Hobbelen said for years she never knew about Miller. “I was told my stepfather was my real father,” she said. But she said she suspected something was wrong.

Her stepfather, whom she said she never felt close to, was missing from the early pictures of her life. Also, Hobbelen did not resemble anyone in the family. She had blond hair and blue eyes, whereas her mother had dark hair and her stepfather had red hair.

“Everyone at school was teasing me,” Hobbelen recalled. “They asked me if I was adopted.”

When she was 11, she asked her mother why she did not fit in. Initially, her mother brushed her questions aside. Then she told Hobbelen about Miller.

“All she said was he lived in America,” Hobbelen said. “I was never really encouraged to find him.”

She said she decided to drop the subject out of respect for her mother and stepfather. But Miller was always in her thoughts.

“I felt like part of me was missing,” Hobbelen said.

About a year ago, a private detective discovered that Natalie had married and was living in Caboolture, Australia, Miller said.

But doctors warned him not to contact her unexpectedly because if she were pregnant, the shock could cause a miscarriage.

“Psychologists said the contact had to be made in person, not over the phone,” he said. “We didn’t know if she knew I was alive.”

He planned a trip to Australia. But shortly before he was scheduled to leave, he had a seizure, apparently caused by scar tissue on the right side of his brain. He was placed on medication and ordered by doctors not to travel.

So Miller, who owns an Oxnard marketing firm, decided to wait.

Meanwhile, Hobbelen’s mother died of cancer, and the daughter pledged to find her father.

First, Hobbelen went to the library in Sydney and looked through the Los Angeles phone book. But there was no Arthur S. Miller listed. When she arrived in Redondo Beach to visit her mother’s relatives last month she searched through the phone books again. No luck.

“Then my great-aunt remembered that his father had been a firefighter,” Hobbelen said.

So she called the Los Angeles Fire Department. Department officials initially were reluctant, but then they agreed to help, Hobbelen said.

“My heart sank, I was so excited,” Hobbelen said.

They were able to find an address of Hobbelen’s grandfather, Arthur W. Miller, a retired Los Angeles battalion chief. They sent him a letter at his residence in Hawaii informing him of his granddaughter’s whereabouts.

The letter arrived on Sept. 17, one day before the elder Miller was scheduled to leave for Florida. He called his son immediately.

“He said, ‘Son, you better be sitting down,’ ” Miller said. “ ‘I have a letter here from the Fire Department. . . . It says Natalie would like you to get hold of her.’ ”

Miller said he was speechless.

“I couldn’t imagine that she would try to find me,” he said. “I was trembling, I couldn’t think straight.”

After several unsuccessful attempts to dial the phone, Miller reached Hobbelen.

“I remember he was crying on the phone,” Hobbelen said. “He said, ‘Natalie, this is your father.’ Then I asked a dumb question: ‘Really?’ ”

“I didn’t know what to say. I was so happy. At last, at last I found my father.”

They met in Redondo Beach. Miller arrived at Hobbelen’s grandparents’ residence with 24 red roses for the time they were apart, and two white roses for the time they were together.

Ever since, they have stayed up until 2 a.m. every night at Miller’s Malibu condominium getting caught up on the years they missed.

Miller gave his daughter all the presents and birthday cards he had bought for her but was never able to give her.

“If there’s a heaven, I’m in it,” Miller said.

Hobbelen said she will return to Australia in two weeks, but she and her husband might move to California. Meanwhile, Miller said he is now well enough to travel and is planning a trip to see his daughter.

“I’ve waited 22 years for this, and I’m not going to let her go,” Miller said. “God has welded us together.”