Friday, March 28, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
As poor and neglected children, 4-year-old Angelique and her big brother Dale picked wildflowers in a meadow and sold them door-to-door to buy toys.
The youngest of six children, the two were inseparable until their parents' divorce led to a chain of events that resulted in them being apart for nearly a quarter of a century.
Angelique went to live with relatives. Dale spent time in a foster home and later was adopted.
Angelique Homm, now a 29-year-old billing manager for the Caring for Women obstetrics and gynecology office in Las Vegas, has long searched for her brother, unaware that since 1988 he has lived just a two-hour drive away in St. George, Utah.
On Thursday afternoon, Las Vegans turned to KTNV Channel 13 to watch their heart-warming reunion on the "Sally Jessy Raphael" show.
"It was a surprise for me because I had been told by the producers that I was going on the show to make a plea to locate my brother," Angelique said before watching for the first time the show that was taped March 4.
"Actually, International Locators (an organization that finds long-lost loved ones) had already found my brother, and he was told three weeks before the taping that he would meet me on the show."
It turns out Dale Jacobs, now 31, had been looking for Angelique for many years.
Adoption privacy policies, including sealed records, had thwarted their efforts to find each other.
On the episode of Raphael's show, Angelique told the studio audience she had been shuffled back and forth between families as a youngster.
Angelique said she and Dale had a typical brother-sister relationship, where he teased her, rode her around on his bicycle handlebars and they stole toys from stores -- apparently when the wildflower profits ran out.
Raphael then called Dale to come out from backstage for what was a Mutt and Jeff encounter -- she 5 feet 4, he 6 feet 5.
Ironically, both had taken flights from McCarran International Airport to New York -- paid for by the show -- for the taping. Dale, a frequent visitor to Las Vegas, had driven to Southern Nevada for his flight.
The two got to catch up on things by taking the same flight home. They have since seen each other twice.
Lee Fryd, spokeswoman for the "Sally Jessy Raphael" show, said her research found that the two "had a mean stepmother and a father who didn't care. All they had was each other, and then they lost that."
After their parents' divorce, Angelique and Dale -- their surname was Wolfert -- stayed with their father, while their four sisters went to live with their mother.
After the father remarried, the couple soon sent Angelique to live with her aunt and uncle, whom she says gave her a good home.
Angelique, who today hardly speaks to her mother but has a bit more cordial relationship with her father, says Dale eventually was adopted by "a wonderful, loving and caring family."
But it was not until she was 12 that Angelique was told her brother had been adopted. She soon realized she may never see him again.
"I thought he had been living with my mother," Angelique told the SUN. "It was tough growing up without him. Every time I'd hear someone say the name Dale I'd turn to look and ask the man if he had been adopted.
"A few years ago, I went through the phone book and called everyone I saw listed with the first name Dale. I got to talk to some nice people -- but none of them my brother."
Recently, friends told Angelique about International Locators, which was able to cut through the red tape that had long entangled her search efforts.
"We have used them for many shows we have done on reunions," Fryd said. "They specialize in these type of searches."
The "Sally Show," as it is called by regular viewers, does several heartstring-tugging reunion shows a year.
For Angelique and Dale, their days of searching are not yet over. They know where three of their sisters are living, but the whereabouts of 35-year-old Teresa Marie Byers, the third eldest, remains a mystery.
"We really would love to locate her and know that she is all right," Angelique said.
If having a bad early childhood has taught Angelique anything, it is that she must strive to do better for her children. She and her husband, Gary Homm, an electrician, are the parents of two girls -- 5-year-old Kailen and 15-month-old Jamie.
"When I was very young I made a promise to myself that I would be nothing like my stepmother," Angelique said. "My kids are my top priority. Family and stability is what is most important."
Dale, who does not get the "Sally Jessy Raphael Show" in St. George, is visiting Angelique and her family this weekend. They plan to pop the tape into the VCR and relive together their treasured reunion.
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