Homeless Tom Cronin has been found ON SAN FRANCISCO

Tom Cronin, left, is seen with his brother, Dan, on Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012 in the SF General Hospital emergency room. Tom Cronin, left, is seen with his brother, Dan, on Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012 in the SF General Hospital emergency room. Photo: Courtesy Of Dan Cronin Photo: Courtesy Of Dan Cronin Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Homeless Tom Cronin has been found 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Take a bow, San Francisco.

Tom Cronin, a homeless man suffering from severe epilepsy, whose family had been desperately trying to find him and get him help for over a month, was found Sunday.

He was in the emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital, where he was held until his brother Dan could drive up from Big Sur, where he lives.

To find their brother safe - except for some bruises and a black eye - was such a sudden and unexpected Christmas miracle that the brothers and sisters were a little overwhelmed. Sister Lisa, who immediately boarded a plane to fly here from Florida, wrote that "I can't seem to stop crying."

"I was truly amazed at the way people mobilized," Dan said. "It says a lot about who we can be when there is a need."

Dan says the moment people read about their plight in Saturday's column, his phone started to ring. I know the feeling. The day the column appeared I heard from people like Yury, a cabdriver, who said he would be working the weekend near the places where Tom was last seen and would be looking for him.

Readers suggested locations where homeless men often camp and some wrote that they were sure they'd seen Tom on the street. But the breakthrough came Sunday when BART police Officer Rodney Barrera, who works in the canine unit, spotted Tom.

Cronin looked pretty rough. His epilepsy is so serious that when he suffers a seizure he's completely incapacitated. The Cronin family had heard that he had been assaulted and lost his belongings more than once.

Barrera got Tom to the emergency room and arranged to have the hospital contact Dan. He drove up from Big Sur in a pounding rain.

"When I got there Tommy was on a gurney," Dan said. "He was pretty out of it. But when I told him who I was, he recognized me. And then he started tearing up."

By that afternoon Tom was released to Dan's care, and the two checked in to a hotel on Geary Street to rest and wait for the arrival of Lisa at the airport.

"We're going to let him settle in for two or three days, and then Lisa will take him back to Florida," Dan said.

Lisa works with the homeless at a soup kitchen there, and says she has access to lots of services and medical help that can improve Tom's condition. It's going to take some time.

"He's probably in the worst shape I've ever seen him," Dan said. "He can't walk much faster than a toddler. It takes him awhile to register a question, and then a while for him to answer."

But after what he's been through, things can only be getting better.

Tom left the United States 10 years ago to live in Japan with his then-wife. For most of that time, the family heard from him regularly via e-mail and letters. But when the correspondence stopped abruptly, they couldn't learn what had happened.

Dan believes it had to do with Tom's visa, which expired. Eventually they learned that Tom and his wife had divorced, so he had no standing in Japan without a visa. The details, however, remain sketchy.

"I think they deported him to San Francisco, and he ended up being dumped on the street."

From there it was a matter of locating Tom, who by then was deeply confused and disoriented. They didn't even know he was in San Francisco until Bill Salame and his wife spotted him near 16th Street. Afterward, Salame discovered the website findtomcronin.com, which Dan had created.

Salame contacted Dan, and that started the chain of events that resulted in Tom returning to his family.

"He was lost," Salame wrote in an e-mail. "And now he is found. Merry Christmas."