Man was missing for 25 years until someone saw his picture in the paper

After 25 years, a family will be reunited with a missing relative thanks to a USA Today article and gumshoe police work.

On Friday, a woman called the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office to say she was sent an article about an unidentified patient in Los Angeles. She believed the man pictured in the article was her brother who was reported missing in 1999 from the rural town of Doyle, the Sheriff’s Office announced in a news release.

The patient was found in South L.A. on April 15 and was being cared for at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood. Hospital officials at the time asked for the public’s help to identify the man, who was unable to communicate.

The hospital announced the patient was believed to be in his mid-60s, with gray hair and blue eyes, and was about 6 feet, 1 inch tall, but it had no other information about him. So it shared a photo of him with the public and asked for help.

On May 9, USA Today published its article with a photo of the man. After six months, things came together in a hurry last week.

The woman who called the Lassen County Sheriff’s Office walked Deputy Derek Kennemore through her story. Kennemore, in turn, reached out to the medical center in Lynwood about the mystery patient but learned he had been transferred to another Los Angeles medical facility in July. That facility confirmed with Kennemore that it had a nonverbal, unidentified person in its care who matched the description.

So Kennemore contacted the missing persons unit at the Los Angeles Police Department, which had a detective fingerprint the patient. The print confirmed the woman’s hunch that it was her missing brother, and Kennemore called her back with the good news.

Sheriff’s officials withheld the names of the patient and the woman to protect the family’s privacy but said they will “be reunited soon.”