The e-mails arrived in March, within an hour of one another -- one from New York City, the other from Austin, Texas.
"My name is Ericka Dotson. I just received word of your story published in the LA Times about my father. My brother and I have been looking for him for over 12 years. This is the happiest day of my life!"
The other was from her brother, Tre:
"Eddie Dotson is my father. . . . Thank you very much for speaking so kindly about him; he's a great man!"
I had written a column two weeks earlier about Eddie Dotson -- a 67-year-old man living in an elaborate shelter under a freeway overpass near USC.
His sidewalk home had no electricity or running water. But he had matching curtains, artwork on the walls and a bowl of fresh fruit on a counter. His creation lent an air of elegance to the gritty street corner.
Failed business ventures and a broken marriage had sent him hitchhiking from Austin to Los Angeles in 1990. But his story didn't explain his homeless status. He was an Air Force veteran with a college degree who spoke proudly of his son and daughter, now 34 and 38. He hadn't left Texas, he told me, until "they didn't need me anymore."
His daughter's e-mail suggested otherwise: "PLEASE call me as soon as you receive this," Ericka wrote me. "I will book a ticket to LA right away to see him."
I printed out the e-mails and showed them to Eddie. His posture softened and eyes grew moist. I dialed Ericka's number and handed him my phone.
And when I heard the tremble in his voice, I wondered if the bonds between a father and his children were strong enough to draw him home.
::
Tre overnighted a cellphone for his father. I taught Eddie to use it, then snapped a photo of him and texted it to his son and daughter.
I visited him every few days and his children called just as often. But Eddie wasn't ready for them to come out. He planned to host them in his sidewalk shelter. He stepped up his scavenging, adding a desk, a plush chair and another bed.
Then a sign went up on a nearby wall. A city maintenance crew was coming to clear "trash and personal belongings" from the sidewalk. Four days later, Eddie's home was dismantled and hauled off.
When I arrived, Eddie was chatting amiably with a police officer. All that he had managed to salvage was piled on a rusty shopping cart.
