A grand family reunion

Nancy Reaves reached for her granddaughter’s hands and held them up to her own, shaking while tears welled up in her eyes, then said, “Look: We have the same hands.”

Face-to-face in John Wayne Airport’s baggage claim Thursday evening was the first time Reaves, 59, of Costa Mesa, had seen her granddaughter Katie Oley in 17 years.

Reaves’ oldest son from a previous marriage had almost no contact with Katie since her birth, which made it nearly impossible for Reaves to find her over the years. Despite having no idea where her granddaughter lived, Reaves conducted her own search using any public resource she could and lots of word-of-mouth.

As her granddaughter, now 19, stepped off the escalator she was greeted by an entire family she had no idea spent nearly two decades looking for her. Now she was being met with balloons, signs reading “Welcome home Katie” and plenty of hugs.

Reaves handed Oley a brand new hot-pink Motorola Razor phone, and there were already voice mail messages from friends waiting to get in touch.

“I’m just ecstatic,” Oley said, wiping back her tears. “I am just happy that somebody actually loves me and I’m home.”

During the last few months the search became a full-family effort as Reaves, her husband of 30 years, Tim Reaves, and their three children made numerous phone calls, sent out letters and surfed the Internet with the hope of finding Oley.

“She looks just like her mother the last time I saw her all those years ago,” Reaves said. “It’s taken a united family to find Katie.”

Through the years, Reaves had been collecting names, numbers and documents all for Katie Misuraca. She was unaware that the girl’s last name was changed to Oley when her mother, Maria Oley, remarried. It had not been legally changed on Oley’s birth certificate so it was difficult to track down through county documents.

“Back in those days all we had was the white pages,” Reaves said. “I can’t tell you how many white pages I went through, all the Misuracas I called.”

But the process rocketed once Reaves discovered MySpace on the Internet.

In July, Reaves posted a letter to 350 people on the popular networking site, who were in the same age range as her “Katie” and attended school in Diamond Bar, Chino Hills and surrounding areas.

Through a few degrees of separation Reaves was told about Stephanie Perez, a girl who lived three houses down from Katie when they were children. Reaves discovered through Perez that Katie moved — with her mother, stepfather and siblings — to Connecticut about six years ago.

Just days after that discovery, Reaves’ youngest son, Timothy “Tim J.” Reaves Jr., was hit by a truck near home on his bicycle and left for dead. Reaves rushed to the hospital where she was met with a grim outlook.

“Every doctor thought he was not going to make it,” Reaves said. “He had a twisted spine, extensive damage to his left leg, and his head was split open.

“They were going to put 18 staples in his head, and I had to go outside to breathe. I just couldn’t take it.”

While Reaves paced outside, taking in all that had just happened, her cellphone rang. It was Perez.

She told her she knew Oley and where her granddaughter had moved.

Reaves then contacted her daughter Maria.

But the message still took some time to get to Oley via her mother, with whom Oley had a falling out. Oley had moved in with her boyfriend’s family for a while.

Then one afternoon Reaves was dropping Tim J. at a class at Orange Coast College when her cellphone rang again. On the other end a small voice said, “Nana?”

Reaves said she could barely get Katie’s name out of her mouth before they both broke down into tears. After 10 minutes of joyful crying, Reaves simply said, “I love you, come home to us Katie.”

That was one week ago. The two have spoke on the phone every day from then.

The family will hold a welcome-home luau this weekend, and after that, Oley plans on attending beauty school.

For the Reaves’, finding Oley was a testament to perseverance.

“Go searching regardless of how hard it is because a miracle can happen, or not even a miracle — the Internet,” Tim Reaves said. “We would have loved to have [had] her in our lives for the last 17 years.”