Just a few weeks ago, Marcella Nasseri was reunited with her long-lost brother, Thomas Manizak, who had been missing for 25 years. Then, dark details about the man’s past came out.

Manizak, now 53, had been on his way to Newport, Oregon, back in late July 1999, then 28 years old. That was the last time he was seen or heard from until Nasseri stumbled across a picture of the man published in USA TODAY that showed him lying in a hospital bed in Lynwood, a city in the middle of Los Angeles County just south of the city’s downtown.

The man is now non-verbal, holed up at St. Francis Medical Center, where he’s reportedly been for weeks since the police found him sitting on a curb in south Los Angeles. Hospital staff had reportedly been desperate to connect him with a loved one when Nasseri came along.

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“All this time, I had been looking for unidentified remains,” Nasseri, who lives in Nassen County in northern California 600 miles away, wrote in a GoFundMe she established to help cover her brother’s medical costs and any other unexpected bills stemming from his condition. “I was delighted to find him alive!”

But a police investigation into the man revealed prior sex offenses, with the man having been charged with lewd and lascivious acts and oral copulation with a child under the age of 14 back in 1993.

He reportedly served three years in prison and was then ordered to add his name to the sex offender registry in Lassen County upon his release. The family later said that what the man had done was “sickening and horrible” and that it had caused a “huge heartache” for them all.

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Nevertheless, Nasseri said he’s still her brother, and she would support him through whatever he needed as he faces perplexing medical issues.

“I’m not turning my back on my flesh and blood,” she told USA TODAY. “I love him, and I’ve been looking for 25 years  all the other stuff is outside noise. He’s my brother, and I love him.”

A few years after being released from prison, Manizak reportedly skipped town, moving to a new Californian city, where he failed to register as a sex offender, which is illegal under California law.

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Lassen County Sheriff’s Department Captain Mike Carney said he went to Oregon after that, where he lived as “kind of a free soul, and he just floated around,” he said the family had told him.

He was an avid camper, his family said, and had last contacted his mother that fateful day on July 30, 1999, from a truck stop near Twin Falls, Idaho. The family said he called his mother twice a week, and he had been on his way to Newport, Oregon, at the time, they said.

Manizak was reportedly on disability, too, because of a diabetes diagnosis, which required two insulin injections per day. But it was reported that he didn’t use his medical card once during his 25-year disappearance to get an insulin prescription or to pick up his disability checks.

It was ultimately a fingerprint that helped the police positively identify Manizak, which they had been unable to obtain beforehand, as he “wasn’t cooperative,” Carney said. “We were told that he was unable to walk and was unable to talk, so I don’t know what happened to him,” he told USA TODAY.

When Nasseri saw the picture of her brother in the publication, she called the police to tell them that she believed him to be her long-lost brother, then sent him some clothes, drawing pencils and a sketchpad, since she said he “loved to draw.”

She said she’s hoping to fly to see her brother soon, but in the meantime, she’s raising funds for his medical expenses and to move him to a hospital closer to where she lives. The GoFundMe didn’t appear to have a goal but had raised $11,700 by Sunday morning.