‘Big Brother’ Plays Multiple Roles for 9-Year-Old

The most striking thing about Brian Hink and Dane Worley is that they look so much alike. The way Dane, 9, squints his eyes, or crosses his legs, or shrugs off a stray thought, is like a boy who doesn’t know yet how much he is like his father.

Even when the two hold a basketball, outsiders can see that someday, when Dane is 26 years old like Brian, he too will probably be 6 1/2 feet tall.

But the two are not father and son. In fact, they met 3 1/2 years ago, when their relationship sprang from two matched files at a Big Brothers/Big Sisters program. The organization’s Orange County chapter was trying to find a male role model for Dane, somebody to take him to baseball games, talk to him about girls, help him with his homework. Dane’s father died in 1992.

Since they were brought together, the two, both of Tustin, have cultivated an unusual relationship that has surprised even those at the Big Brothers program. It is a friendship that somehow is much more than that of a father and son, or a brother and brother, or a friend and friend, because, by design and hope, it must be all of those things.

“They just clicked,” said Jolene Felkner, a spokeswoman for Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Orange County in Tustin.

For years now, the two have met once a week, sometimes more often, to do the simplest of things: go to the batting cages, take in a movie, watch the World Series.

Dane is the son of Tustin Mayor Pro Tem Tracy Wills Worley.

“I was very nervous when I first met him,” Hink said. “He’s the son of the mayor, and his father passed on. I know I’m not supposed to fill that spot, but there’s still pressure.”

Dane is articulate and well-spoken, like a boy who spends more time with older folks than he does with his peers. Of the time he and Brian met, Dane said, “When he came over . . . I thought he was just somebody to work on the house. He is . . . a lot of things to me now.”

Dane defies the stereotype of the wayward child who needs a father figure to set him right. More than anything, those who know him figure, he’s just a kid who needed somebody to talk to.

It’s an easy camaraderie now. When asked what, fundamentally, they see in each other, the two of them grin at the seemingly superfluous question and say, at the precise same time, “He’s my friend, I guess,” and laugh.

Dane’s father died after a lengthy off-and-on struggle with melanoma. Dane was 2. In search of a role model who might fill the empty spot in Dane’s life, Dane’s mother enrolled him in the Big Brothers program.

Despite the passage of time, it’s still difficult for Dane to talk about the loss of his father, and the two skip over it swiftly. But it is there, and Hink knows it.

Hink says it’s difficult for him too. He doesn’t presume that he can fill the father’s shoes, but at the same he’s eager to be a version of a father to Dane. Dane bows his head a little when the subject of his father comes up.

Sometimes it’s easier to play sports, to work on Dane’s baseball swing.

“Brian is the one who made my swing better,” Dane said.

And so they find a soccer field after school, play basketball at Dane’s home with a roll-out basketball hoop, or throw the baseball around. In between, they talk.

“I think the best thing I can do for Dane is to be there for him consistently. That’s what I can do, be there for him whenever he needs it,” Hink said. “Eventually [Big Brothers/Big Sisters] will close the file, but I know I’ll always be a part of his life.”

The two said they would not shoot hoops on Father’s Day. It wouldn’t seem right. But they will today.