She flew to Detroit to find homeless brother — but realized he was closer than she thought

She saw an odd Free Press story about a grieving writer who got an overdue haircut — a white guy at a black barbershop — and way out in Portland, Oregon, not Portland Michigan, Nancy Morales decided to leave her husband.

Leave him, that is, just long enough to spend a long weekend in Detroit, where Morales enlisted the writer in a search for her homeless brother.

It wasn’t going to be easy, finding Brent Green, 58, who’d been homeless for decades and away from family for seven years.

"The last time he wrote to me, he said he was living in the Packard Plant. That was back in March, and he hasn’t answered any emails since," she said.

So a homeless drifter had adopted perhaps the world’s most notorious industrial ruin for his home? Somewhere in those 40 acres of decaying steel and concrete, encircled by 24-hour guards, Morales wanted a Free Press reporter clad in decaying Skechers to “help me find Brent.”

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They failed. After five days, her hope turned to tears. With the reporter’s on-and-off help, Morales visited and drove by the Packard Plant repeatedly, checked the Wayne County morgue twice, paid two visits to Detroit’s 7th Precinct police station, visited Detroit’s main library where homeless people can use the computers for email, stopped at homeless shelters and the Michigan Humane Society, everywhere asking everyone she could about “a man with a big dark beard and a backpack and a real nice bicycle, maybe squatting in the Packard Plant — Oh, and he loves dogs, so he might be volunteering at some animal shelter.”

The plant guards and the morgue technicians, the detectives, librarians, shelter clerks, and street people, all heard her out. Most asked about Brent Green’s mental state.

“He’s been a vagabond since 2000. Got brain damage from a high fever at 3 years of age. Likes libraries. Likes to read,” she’d say. People listened, nodded, promised they’d contact her “if we see him.”

Over and over, she exclaimed to the reporter, “Everybody in Detroit has been so nice to me, trying to help.” More than one stranger prayed with her. Allan Hill, widely known as the only person allowed to live and work legally inside the Packard Plant, although that is being contested in court, held Morales’ hand and asked Providence to “heal broken hearts … with the return of Mr. Green.”

Yet, when the weekend ended in late September, Morales heaved a sigh: “I guess I have to give up and just go home without him. I hate to think he could be dead. But he could be.”

The reporter was thinking the same. The searching and worrying ended with a tearful hug for the Free Press writer. And all of that made Morales’ Thanksgiving Day just that much sweeter.

On Thursday, in Corvallis, Oregon, a 90-minute drive from her home, Morales sat down for Thanksgiving dinner with her brother, Brent, who, it turned out, had never left his home state. He'd never come to find accommodations on Detroit’s rough-and-tumble near east side, amid the 116-year-old wreckage of legendary architect Albert Kahn’s first factory.

Morales had turkey. Her brother had a hamburger.

She found him in a fluke, contacting homeless shelters by Facebook. In mid-October, Brent Green’s name came up at the homeless shelter of a church in Bend, Oregon. The outreach director there confirmed that she’d known Brent for three years.

“And he’s alive and well. OMGosh!” Morales texted the reporter. “He majorly fibbed to me about Detroit and I feel a little foolish about dragging you into this. I want to hug him, love him and throttle him at the same time!” she texted.

At first, there was a holdup. As one detective had said, "Some homeless folks don't want to be found." Asked by a shelter boss to contact his sister, Brent demurred.

“He’s not ready to talk but said to tell his sister, thanks for her concern,” Morales noted in a text.

She persisted, meanwhile, reaching back to as many contacts as she could in Detroit, telling them that “Brent’s found.”

Morales put the 1988 film “Rain Man” on her DVD player, a Dustin Hoffman movie about a man with seriously impaired social skills, “which reminded me to be understanding of Brent,” she said.

Weeks passed and, suddenly, Brent was answering emails. Morales started making him a quilt, to upgrade Brent from shelter bedding. On the back, where only he’d see it, big letters spelled out “Fent,” which was the way their childhood buddy “little Jimmy” used to pronounce Brent.

The two made a date for their holiday dinner, and hints kept getting better that brother Brent was, well, doing well.

Once Morales arrived, she learned that he was working as a janitor at Oregon State University, taking a physics class with the employee discount, living in a tent outside a house he was watching for absentee owners while caring for their dog. He’d also bought a used car.

After their holiday feast at a restaurant, Morales handed her phone to Brent, who sounded in good humor as he confessed to the Free Press, “I was in Oregon the whole time. It would be a good bike ride to get to Detroit. But once you got over the Rockies, maybe not too bad.”

His sister was surprised on all counts.

“He shaved his beard. He looks real good. We have lunched and I’ve gotten teary-eyed but I don’t want to have my mascara run.”

The two have already made plans for a second reunion. 

“I told him that everyone wants to see him at Christmas. So, he’s going to stay with me and everybody’s going to visit us. It’s been seven years since anybody’s seen him. And he’s just doing really well. .. He has health care coverage.”

With that, Morales bid farewell to her brother and the quilt she’d given him, then gritted her teeth for a slippery drive through mountains to see her family members two hours away.

“I’m gonna have to drive through some snow, but I’m gonna make it. I bought some tire sox. They’re really good in the snow out here.”

Do Michiganders know tire sox? Maybe in the U.P. They do sound holiday cozy — in red, please.

As Morales prepared to drive up and out of sight, she texted these final words:

“Tell everyone I love Detroit and everyone there who was so helpful, with thoughts, prayers and direction,” she wrote.

It was a warm Thanksgiving Day sentiment, sent cross-country to metro Detroit, from a sister who found a sibling who, thankfully, wasn’t homeless in Detroit.

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com