Angeline Hoercher-Bryan FBI photo

After five years of looking for her kidnapped daughter, five years of tears and prayers, Hoercher had found Angeline attending elementary school on Kaua'i. Within hours yesterday, Kaua'i police had arrested Hoercher’s ex-husband and recovered the 11-year-old girl.

Today, Hoercher is flying to Lihu'e for an emotional reunion sometime this afternoon and Angeline’s father — Jon Michael Bryan, 45 — is being held in the police cellblock on federal charges.

For Whatley, it seemed like a cross between a long-shot and a miracle, a one in a 75-million discovery. He had been working on the case "for a solid year" with little to go on but instincts and former addresses of Bryan’s friends, who had all left Florida around the same time he and his daughter vanished — sometime in July 1998.

But six weeks ago, Whatley convinced the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to arrange a massive mail-out of 75 million fliers emblazoned with Angeline Bryan-Hoercher’s photograph. They were sent all over the country, although none was sent to Hawai'i.

Whatley got 350 responses in two weeks, none of them a match. When he thought he might not have recognized the child, that maybe he had missed something crucial, he asked Hoercher to help him review them again yesterday afternoon.

Then he got a call and an e-mailed photograph, although he won’t say from where.

Jon Michael Bryan Kaua'i Police Department

He told Hoercher to come in an hour early.

"A mom would know," he said. "When she saw this, she knew. She started screaming and nearly blew the roof off the room."

Elka Hoercher had last seen her daughter on June 28, 1998, when Jon Michael Bryan — the non-custodial parent in the failed relationship — picked up the child for a scheduled, 30-day visitation. The last time anyone saw him was on July 27, 1998, outside his Delray Beach apartment. He told his mother he was going camping in the Florida Keys.

Then he vanished.

None of Bryan’s friends cooperated with police, Whatley said. One had moved to Michigan, one to Tennessee and one to Hawai'i.

"Everybody was gone," Whatley said.

But sometime later that year, Bryan moved to Kaua'i, the detective said.

Police do not think he ever got a regular job. Whatley said Bryan was living under an alias, Jonny Lee, in Kapa'a and had renamed his daughter Lana Lee.

He also had a girlfriend who may not have known the truth of his past, Whatley said.

The child also may not have known the truth.

"She was told by her dad that her mom had abandoned her when she was a baby," Whatley said. "He was telling people, including his girlfriend, that he was a single parent and the mother left the country and that she was a foreign national."

Elka Hoercher is from Germany but she still lives in Florida.

After Whatley called Kaua'i police, they went to Kapa'a Elementary School to verify Angline’s identity. Once that was done, they took the child and turned her over to state Child Protection Services officials and waited for Bryan to pick up his daughter.

At 12:47 p.m., officers arrested Bryan without incident. They are holding him on a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Bryan had also been charged by Florida authorities with parental kidnapping, a third-degree felony.

School officials would not comment on the case, today.

Craig DeCosta, a Kaua'i County deputy prosecuting attorney, today said Bryan will be held while Florida authorities arrange for extradition. They must also confirm his identity and send proof of the felony warrant, DeCosta said.

Whatley said Florida authorities definitely want Bryan back.

"We want to bring him back to Florida and make sure he will be prosecuted," Whatley said.

The detective does not yet know how much prison time Bryan could face, if convicted.

"I’m hoping they throw the key away," he said. "But I know they won’t do that."