Al Sculthorpe meets the daughter he hadn’t seen since she was 2, and the grandson he didn’t know he had

Al Sculthorpe couldn’t really afford the trip, but after 38 years of

missing her, he was not going to miss a chance to meet his oldest

daughter.

So Oct. 23, he and his youngest daughter, Heather, 15, boarded a plane for Las Vegas.

And almost missed their next flight during a layover in Salt Lake City.

“They said ‘we sold your tickets,’ ” says Al, who turns 61 today. “I

said, ‘We have to get there. My daughter I haven’t seen for 38 years is

waiting for me.’ “

They got on that flight, and in Las Vegas saw this sign: “Dad (Al)” because that’s how he’d signed his e-mails.

“I didn’t know how she’d react to me,” he says about that signature.

Sculthorpe married Dora Jean Marie Gontko 40 years ago, and they had a little girl they named Rhonda.

They divorced two years later, and Rhonda was swept out of his life.

“Last thing I’d heard was she’d (his ex-wife) married someone in the military and moved to Korea,” he says.

Sculthorpe thought about Rhonda a lot as the years passed, and his family grew with two sons and another daughter.

With the Internet, he’s tried searching for his daughter, but never made any progress.

Four months ago he joined Facebook, and two months after that he was contacted by a woman he’d known 40 years ago who was searching for his ex-wife.

One connection led to another, and soon he knew his daughter’s full name – Rhonda Trombetti – and phone number in Las Vegas.

He called.

“We talked for over an hour,” he says, smiling as he tells the story a month later. “We had a lot to say – ‘you’ve been a void in my life.’ We were both curious about each other. She wanted to know what made her tick, her other half. She didn’t remember anything about me.”

But talking on the phone wasn’t enough, so he bought the plane tickets.

He was more excited than nervous to meet his eldest daughter, who is a school bus driver in Las Vegas and has a 4-year-old son.

“I met my grandson (Thomas), who I didn’t know I had – ‘Little T,’ ” Sculthorpe says.

Again, the smile.

“My grandson called me Al.”

They flew home Oct. 25.

“It was hard to leave,” Sculthorpe says. “She was more than I expected. The void is filled.”

And another reunion is in the works.

“She wants to come up here and learn to snowboard,” he says.