William Guy, better known as local rapper Willy G, figured it was worth a shot.
The Pearl Harbor shipyard painter, a 25-year-old father of two, had long tried to track down the little brother and sister he barely knew, but he always came up short.
They had been born an ocean away, in California, and were later taken into foster care and adopted. He knew just their first names, not even the right spelling.
On Aug. 21, Willy G posted a 10-year-old photo on his Facebook account, showing him with his arms around a rambunctious 4-year-old Dartanan and a beaming 2-year-old Taina. It was taken when he got to meet them once during a trip to Carson, Calif., with his Boys and Girls Club football team.
“My name is Will Guy,” he wrote next to the photo. “I’m from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and I’m looking for my younger brother and sister. They are my siblings from our late father, Rickey, who passed away when I was 13, three years before my mom did in 2006. …
“We’ve lived separate lives but as far apart as we were, they were equally as tough childhoods and I just want them to know that their big brother has been waiting for them and has always been here for them … still am & always will be. … Last I know, they lived in California. They should be around 13-16 now.”
A decade had passed since their last contact.
It took just two hours to get his answer.
The post was shared more than 1,000 times and Guy soon began receiving links to profile pictures of kids with the same names. One grabbed his attention. It was 14-year-old Dartanan, with heavy-rimmed glasses and a small scar on his brow that looked familiar. Guy sent him the picture and a message.
“If this is you,” he wrote, “you are my brother.”
On the other end, Dartanan Strickland was wary. The fidgety teen, who speaks in short bursts of words, was living in a group home in Rialto, Calif., his third group home in eight months. Trust is a currency he had lost over the years.
“I thought it was a stalker,” he said.
But the photo sure looked like him and his sister. So he made a call.
Guy answered, cradling his cellphone in his tattooed, muscular arm — and broke down in tears.
The link between them was confirmed with another photo that Dartanan recognized from his childhood.
Today, Guy and Jessica Misa and their kids, 4-year-old Isaiah and 8-month-old Lyric, are celebrating Thanksgiving with Dartanan and their extended ohana. They hope to adopt him.
“I’m finally with my true family,” Dartanan said. “I’m feeling relieved.”
The impetus for the Facebook post was simply to establish a relationship, to give Isaiah and Lyric a chance to know their long-lost “aunty and uncle” and for the mainland kids to meet Guy and his five siblings. Guy then made plans to fly up to see Dartanan later in the year.
But less than two months after connecting with his brother, Dartanan had waited long enough. On Oct. 2, he bolted from the group home. Clutching a plastic bag with a few clothes, he called Guy to say he was on his way.
“It was cold and he didn’t have any money,” Guy said. “His cellphone was dying. We called the group home and they just said he don’t live there any more.”
Misa checked California’s Missing Children Clearinghouse. “No one was looking for him,” she said.
With help from a sister, they got Dartanan an Uber trip to the airport and a plane ticket to Honolulu. He arrived two days later.
“It was no choice — either that or he was going to stay out there in the streets,” Guy explained. “It wasn’t my plan for it to be that quick.”
Guy and Misa took Dartanan to the state’s Child Welfare Services office in Kapolei, which handles child protection. After some back and forth, they received permission last week from the California court to foster him.
“I’m thankful,” Guy said. “It’s what my dad would have wanted.”
Guy knows tough times. When he was just a toddler, his photo was featured in the newspaper. The image shows him at the gate of a new playground, ready to charge in. It was taken at the Loliana Family Shelter for the homeless in Kakaako.
His parents divorced when he was 2 years old, and the kids were often on their own. His oldest brother, Carl Braine, shouldered the role of protector of the brood. His grandma also helped raise him, and when he was a teen, Sandi and John Doane gave him a loving home.
“The whole purpose in life is to be with your family,” said Carl Braine, now 40 and a broad-shouldered bear of a man. “It means everything.”
Willy G poured himself into his music and in the back of his mind hoped it might help him find his relatives. He was named best local Hip-Hop Artist in the 2015 Honolulu Pulse Awards.
Their family picture, though, isn’t quite complete. Dartanan still had a phone number for his sister. When he called her from Ewa Beach, she sounded eager to meet her Hawaii ohana. But her adoptive parents, who had relinquished Dartanan to the state, told him never to call again.
The road ahead won’t be easy. Misa is a full-time mom and Guy works for a marine painting subcontractor and gets laid off every time a ship leaves. Finances are tight, and teen boys are ravenous eaters. But Guy says he has hope and faith that everything will work out. Dartanan is enrolling at his alma mater, Campbell High.
“It’s tough because we’re young parents ourselves,” said Misa, who graduated from Radford High and grew up in Japan and California in a military family. “To raise a teen that we had just met, it’s been tough. But it will be fine, I’m sure.”
“I’m excited,” she said. “We are blessed to have found him.”
Despite the distance in age between the two brothers and the fact that they grew up apart, she sees lots of similarities.
“Sometimes they butt heads because they are so much alike,” she said. “And they make this noise, a clicking sound, after they say a sentence sometimes. They are both smooth talkers, and they have to have their way.”
It will take time and effort for Dartanan to fit into a new family and different culture. He is quick to pick up his baby niece when she awakes from her nap, and he gets into tussles with his nephew Isaiah.
“We’re big on respect and manners,” said Misa, who looks like a teen but is 24 and already seems to have the equanimity and wisdom of a veteran parent. “I think he’s learning that. Trying to.”
She grew up in a large family and their home often was a refuge for kids who were having a rough time.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, she put up a poster over the dining table in their modest town house listing the “family rules.” Among them: “Keep your promises.” “Be yourself.” “Learn from mistakes.” “Love each other.”
“Hug a lot.” “Be thankful.” “Never give up.”
