Long-lost siblings reunited through MySpace page

Kaitlin Vance spent 11 years clinging to her memories of Billy, the big brother behind long walks in her stroller and her first lessons on tying her shoes.Those were some of the best recollections she could tap from an otherwise hard-knock childhood - one that saw her bounced and slapped around, pinball-style, by the child welfare system. Somewhere along the line she'd been told that Billy, her half-brother, had moved to the East Coast to live with his grandmother. He was out of her life, unavailable.But she refused to give up on the notion that Billy would somehow find his way back into her life.In the meantime, both Kaitlin, 15, and her younger brother Patrick, 14, found the love they needed to thrive in the foster home provided by Robert and Trina Quinn of Lincoln."I worked for Head Start and I was a home visitor," Trina Quinn said. "They were in Roseville. Their mother had died and their father had brought them out (to California)."(Their father) brought them out with their brother, Billy," she added. "But Billy was not his biological child, so there were a lot of problems and Billy went back. Kaitlin had a lot of good memories of him, but Pat hardly remembered him."Trina Quinn made several queries regarding Billy, but the trail went cold.Still, more than 1,200 miles away in Colorado, Will "Billy" Fout's passion for finding his kid brother and sister burned more brightly than ever. One of those little patriotsLynda Armes makes no effort to hide her love affair with the city of New York. The evidence is visible from the second you walk into the G Street office of Maidu Financial, where Armes serves as branch managerOn a wall to the right of the entrance is a large, framed copy of Charles C. Ebbets' beloved photo "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper," which depicts 11 construction workers pausing for lunch - their feet dangling hundreds of feet over Manhattan - during the construction of the GE Building at Rockefeller Center.A few feet away, another black-and-white shot offers a tighter view of the city that never sleeps."I love New York," Armes offers easily.Armes is far from a fair-weather Big Apple fan.She rushed to New York in the wake of that city's darkest day, where she served as a volunteer working in the makeshift command post at the historic St. Paul's Chapel, directly across the street from the World Trade Center site.Armes - who admits she's always had a patriotic bent - cannot imagine an America that forgets the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But she fears the possibility.That's part of the reason she decided to create a special window display at the front of her business to honor area troops serving in the war against terror. "I was thinking about July and the Fourth of July," she said "And I was just thinking that, while I was here having a good time, they were making sure that I could."I've always been one of those little patriots who got a lump in their throat," she added.So Armes e-mailed people throughout the greater Lincoln community, asking them to donate creative displays that told the stories of individual soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines.The result is a red, white and blue-splashed spectacle that's proven to be a traffic-stopper."It's amazing," Armes said. "You watch people come by and they always stop and look at it and read it. I've got a tapestry in the background, hanging and just the displays from (the families). Each one of them was a story of service."But one story - told in the simple language of a 15-year-old girl - made her stop in her tracks."It was the best story, ya know?"Wills Fout, an Iraq war veteran, had been on another sort of mission for 11 years - one to find the kid brother and sister he left behind in California. An E-4 in the Army, Fout was at it again, searching cyberspace for clues on the whereabouts of Kaitlin and Patrick Vance.Suddenly, something caught his eye as he looked over a MySpace page for a teen in the same vicinity. It's a picture of a girl with her friend, Kaitlin. Fout stopped and called for his wife. Did this 15-year-old look like him? Was he crazy to think there was a resemblance? No, he wasn't, she told him. He needed to write an e-mail or make a call - right away.So Fout, 25, quickly typed an e-mail to a teenage girl in Lincoln, then waited ...The phone at the home of Robert and Trina Quinn rang and one of their foster daughter's friends was on the other line. There was an e-mail she needed to read to Kaitlin."Hi Kaitlin," the author wrote. "My name is Will Fout. This might be kind of weird and all, but if your have a brother named Patrick Vance and your father was named Kevin Vance, I think I'm your brother ..."Three months later, Trina Quinn recalled her first phone conversation with Will Fout."It turns out he had always been looking for them," she said. "I cried when he first called and I just told him that we were here for him and that our home was always open to him. I think he was probably thinking I'm crazy."I can tell that, for Will, finding them filled a void for him," she added. "I believe he felt bad all that time that he wasn't there for them."Fout and family members have been talking about a face-to-face reunion ever since that fateful call. But finances as well as his duties have made it difficult to complete the connection. One attempt was cancelled when Fout couldn't secure the necessary leave. Now, the summer's higher air fares are keeping him grounded."He's hoping to save his money this fall so that he can come out before he goes back to Iraq in December for 15 months," Quinn said.According to their foster mom, Kaitlin shows more emotion than Patrick regarding the unlikely reunion. But there's hope that Patrick - who has no personal memories of interaction with his brother - can establish some sort of connection with Fout when he meets him face-to-face.Kaitlin, it seems, has already gone through that process on the phone."I was very surprised because we had been looking for him for a very long time," she said of the moment when Will's e-mail was read to her over the phone. "I started crying and my Mom started crying and it was shocking."He left his number so right away I called him and, when he answered, he said 'This is Will,'" she added. "And I answered 'Will, this is Kaitlin.' He was always there when we were little. He was really the one who took care of us."Tell us a soldier storyThree months later Trina Quinn, who works as a real estate agent with American Home Realty in Wheatland, received an e-mail from her friend, Lynda Armes, at Maidu Financial."She said she was putting together Fourth of July pictures and asked if we knew someone who was in the military," Quinn said. "At first I thought, 'that doesn't apply to me.' Then, suddenly, I was like 'Will!'"Quickly a simple, red placard was designed with a single photo of Fout, in uniform, a photo of the Vance children with the Quinns and the following note written by Kaitlin:"We found our brother, and he's serving our country!!! When our mother passed away, we were quite young. We did remember our brother, Billy though, he was always kind to us. We were told he went to live with his grandmother in North Carolina. Our foster mother tried to help us find him. After 11 years, he found us on My Space. It has been a fun telephone reunion, but he has to leave coming next month, and then we can visit in person."