5 Years of Heartache Ends for the Family : Reaction: Steen’s wife and daughters recall all the missed milestones as they pack their bags for Germany and a reunion.

Jackie Scardino got married in 1988, but there was no father to walk her down the aisle.

Her son, Jordan, was born on Valentine’s Day the next year, but there was no grandfather to welcome him into the world.

Her sister, Becky Monday, also was married and gave birth to a son--but those milestones also passed while Alann Steen was chained to a wall in Beirut.

“There was a certain emptiness I felt--my father was missing,” Scardino, 30, said as she sat in her Thousand Oaks townhouse Tuesday, scanning the television news for a glimpse of her newly freed father. “Now I don’t feel as empty and frustrated as I did before. My son has a grandpa. Now I have a dad I can call.”

After nearly five years of heartache, of undying faith tempered by often-dashed hopes, the Steen family finally glimpsed their patriarch via satellite as he told a press conference in Damascus, Syria, that it felt great to be free.

Relatives were taken aback by his gaunt, pale appearance, but they said they never doubted that the former Marine--who once squared off against a grizzly bear while on a solo backpacking trip in Alaska--would survive his ordeal.

“Many days I felt, ‘Oh, how long is this going to go on?’ ” said Steen’s wife, Virginia, who teaches art history at Albion College near her parents’ home in Clark Lake, Mich. “But you can’t give up hope. If Alann, chained to the wall for five years, not seeing daylight, could keep himself going--that’s what kept us going.”

Earlier in the day, the couple, who were married just six months before Steen’s abduction on Jan. 24, 1987, spoke on the phone. “It was incredible to hear his voice, to know that this is finally, finally over,” she told reporters, her face flushed and voice trembling. “We’re still pinching ourselves.”

In the town of Arcata in Northern California, where Steen, 52, had taught journalism at Humboldt State University and edited a small newspaper before heading to Lebanon, word of his release ignited spontaneous celebrations.

“I’m on top of the world!” squealed Monica Hadley, who owned the weekly Arcata Union when Steen was editor there in the late 1960s. “He looked awfully worn and thin when I saw him on TV this morning, but I could tell the old Alann Steen was still there. I could see the sparkle.”

On the university campus, the college newspaper--the Lumberjack--scrambled to work the story of Steen’s release onto today’s front page, and students swapped tales about the school’s most legendary professor.

“Most of us don’t know him, but there’s still a strong connection with Alann because of his history here,” said Rhonda Crisp-Foster, a Humboldt senior who writes for the Lumberjack.

About 300 miles to the south, Becky Monday told reporters outside her Los Banos home that she hoped her father would settle again in California. Asked what she had learned from the ordeal, her husband, Jim, piped in: “Patience, tolerance.”

“Impatience, intolerance,” quipped his wife, 29, a former paramedic. “Maybe a little bit of both.”

Jim Monday, also a paramedic and firefighter, married Steen’s daughter 3 1/2 years ago after proposing to her over the emergency band radio. He said he had never met his father-in-law, but had admired traits in his wife that he assumed were inherited. “I’m eager to meet that man who had that influence,” he said.

On Tuesday, the entire family was preparing to board a flight to Germany, courtesy of the State Department, where they were to be reunited with the former hostage. Scardino, an elementary school teacher, said she will take the opportunity to tell her father that she is expecting her second child in June.

Virginia Steen said she will pack her husband’s favorite snack.

“The most important thing now is that Alann get all the care and pampering and pleasure of sleep and rest that he needs,” she said. “He’ll probably want a tall glass of milk and some Hydrox cookies.”

Times staff writers Dan Morain in Los Banos and Jenifer Warren in Los Angeles and Times researcher Amy Harmon in Detroit contributed to this report.