As an Army reservist, Donald Kachmar frequently came to the Pendel-Caminiti Army Reserve Center in Farrell to teach radio communications.

On one of those trips, he attended a picnic at Buhl Farm park, Hermitage, and was drawn to a fairway at Sharon Country Club. There was something about the place that he recognized. He felt like he had been there before, confusing thoughts for someone raised in Punxsutawney.

As he walked the fairway, he noticed nearby Bechtol Avenue in Sharon. It also seemed strangely familiar.

On later trips to Farrell for training sessions, he would return to Bechtol.

"For some reason, I used to go up and down the old street," said the resident of Big Run, Pa. "I didn't know why."

There was one house, 984 Bechtol, that triggered a stronger sense of recognition than any of the others. "It stood out for some reason," he said.

A neighbor once saw him and asked him what he was doing, but he didn't let on what he was feeling and didn't approach the house.

"I figured all I needed was to be arrested in Sharon," Kachmar, 45, quipped.

Although unable to make sense of his feelings, Kachmar knew there were "holes" in his life story. At 25, he found out he had been adopted.

He searched for his birth mother and found her, but that still didn't rectify certain memories -- happy memories -- of faces of people and the interior of a house.

"She mentioned a foster family," Kachmar said of his birth mother.

Kachmar tried to find out who the foster family was.

"As I got into it more, there were more roadblocks," he said. "It was a big, gray situation."

And then, about a year ago, a fire destroyed his home, which was not insured.

"All the records and things that I had were all burned," said the married father of three. "We pretty much lost everything."

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Marco and Jeannette Paoletta loved children. They had 10.

But their house at 984 Bechtol was never too small to handle a few more.

Recommended to an adoption agency by an aunt who took in foster children, the Paolettas opened their home to children who been abused and malnourished, or were believed to have developmental problems.

If it meant taking in three children under the age of 3, when she already had three of her own in that age range, that was fine, said Jeannette Paoletta Morreale, who now lives in Sharpsville.

"I couldn't say no," said Ms. Morreale, who at one point had 11 children living with her. "I couldn't stand the little ones hurting like that."

Her husband, who died in 1985, thought along the same lines.

"My father couldn't stand the thought of orphanages and stuff like that," said Marco Paoletta Jr., better known as "Marc."

Most of the foster kids were with the family for a very short time. Some for a number of years.

In August 1956, Catholic Charities dropped off a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby named Donald L. He was only a few days old and authorities believed he was a child with special needs.

"They told me he would be a slow child, which he wasn't," Ms. Morreale said. "He was a sickly child."

But believing there would be problems, the family, especially the elder Paoletta, doted on the boy, who had been born in Cleveland.

When Donald L. was older, Marco Jr. would hoist the boy on his shoulders and walk the fairways of Sharon Country Club looking for golf balls.

"As time went on, we felt like he was ours and that if the decision for him to be adopted was ever made, we would be the only choice," said Marco Jr.'s sister, Joyce Paoletta Restivo, of Ballwin, Mo.

"We were wrong."

Because Donald L.'s natural mother knew where the Paolettas lived, the adoption agency decided he couldn't be adopted by them, Ms. Morreale said.

Donald L. was just shy of his fifth birthday when he was taken away.

The rift devastated the entire family. Marco Sr., a man of few outward emotions, would wake up in the morning in tears, and then deny that he had been crying.

"He (Marco Sr.) lost nine pounds in a week when he (Donald L.) left," Ms. Morreale said.

Donald L. was taken to an orphanage in Erie.

"We would drive to Erie and park outside the orphanage, just hoping to see him play," Ms. Restivo said.

Paoletta gave the boy several toys, including a pop gun in which the Paoletta's address was written on a piece of paper rolled up in the barrel.

All the toys were taken away.

Donald L. was adopted by a family from Punxsutawney.

Ms. Morreale briefly exchanged letters with Donald L.'s adopted mother. The adoption agency decided that wasn't a good idea and put an end to the correspondence.

The letters were forwarded through the adoption agency and anything that might have given away Donald L.'s address or last name was blacked out, Ms. Morreale said.

As the Paoletta family grew, the parents considered leaving 984 Bechtol and moving into a bigger home, maybe a home in the country.

But Paoletta could never sign on the dotted line.

"Donnie will one day walk back up on our porch," he explained to his wife.

Paoletta made his family pledge to never leave the house so that Donald L. could find them.

His daughter, Jody Paoletta Zajac, and her family live there.

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Marc Paoletta thought the family had given up on finding Donald L., the foster child who had stayed with the family longer than any of the nine who had entered and left their lives.

Ms. Morreale, whose second husband, Eugene Morreale, died in 1997, also had given up hope of ever knowing anything about Donald L.

"I respected that the records were sealed," she said.

But no roadblock could deter others from the search.

Most desperate to find Donald L. was Ms. Restivo, who considered him a twin brother, and felt that she was missing her "other half." She was 5 months old -- the sixth of the 10 Paoletta children -- when Donald arrived on the Paoletta doorstep.

Ms. Restivo and Ms. Zajac searched for Donald L. by placing ads in newspapers, making telephone calls and praying.

The family assumed that he was in the Erie area, and they focused their efforts there.

Marc Paoletta saw a letter that his sister had written about the search and it broke his heart.

About three months ago, he decided to join the search.

While the adoption agency would not release records, it would confirm something that was true, he said.

So, when he talked with a woman -- a former co-worker of his wife's -- who was familiar with the agency, and she told him that the agency had an office in Clearfield, Paoletta asked the agency if Donald L. had been adopted in that area. It said, "Yes."

Focusing in Clearfield, the family started placing ads in newspapers and seeking contacts.

A volunteer group known as Search Angels saw one of the ads and contacted Paoletta. Plugging what little information the Paolettas had on Donald L. into a computer data base, they were able to learn that a Donald Leo Kachmar had been born on Donald L.'s birth date, Aug. 1, 1956.

The data base had an address of Reynoldsville, Pa., for Kachmar, but that was the site of the house that had burned. The post office would not give them a forwarding address.

Jody Zajac learned on a Web site devoted to finding high school classmates that Kachmar had graduated from Punxsutawney High School. By contacting his classmates, she was able to get a telephone number for Kachmar's mother-in-law, and called her.

Kachmar's mother-in-law relayed a message to Kachmar, who was in Texas on vacation, and he called Ms. Morreale.

"She cried for an hour before she could even say anything," said Paoletta, of Sharon.

"I was kind of stunned and excited," Kachmar said of hearing from the Paolettas. "It was kind of a neat Christmas present."

On Dec. 31, five days after learning his name, a contingent of Paolettas met Kachmar at the Radisson Hotel, Shenango Township, as he made his way from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport back home to Big Run.

Kachmar said he didn't recognize anyone besides Ms. Morreale and one of her sons, but added: "When you line the faces up, they kind of look the same."

Paoletta said Kachmar matched the old pictures the family had saved from when he was a boy.

"I just looked in his eyes: same exact stare," Paoletta said.

They took Kachmar to 984 Bechtol.

"I remember the house and a lot of things in there," he said. "I do have some memories of the family."

Kachmar told the Paolettas about his visits to the house before he knew its significance. Ms. Morreale said it was "eerie" to learn that Kachmar had seen the house.

"It made your hair stand on end knowing that he stood on our street and looked at our house," she said.

"Supposedly, the month that he (Marco Sr.) passed away was one of the times I was at the house," Kachmar said.

Finding the Paolettas has given Kachmar some peace, he said. Even the guys he works with at a window and door manufacturer in Punxsutawney have noticed he's smiling more.

The "hole you had all the time" has been filled, said Kachmar, who attended a party in his honor Sunday in Sharon.

"I usually talk to one of them every night," he said of the Paolettas. "They're pretty neat folks."

You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Joe Pinchot at

jpinchot@sharon-herald.com