Don Butler is a survivor of sorts. He was born in Hollywood, where his father worked in a local restaurant. Don's mother would take him there for lunch and that is where he met Shirley Temple.

She was dining with her family and that's how they met and became playmates at the age of 5. Little Shirley was just beginning her movie career and got Don a part as an extra in one of her films. He also lived next door to Carl Switzer, who played "Alfalfa" - one of the icon's from the "Our Gang" movies. Don was an extra in several of those movies as well.

His career was short-lived because his family lived a nomadic life. He was in a different school every year wondering what was going on; A 6 year-old never asked any questions back in those days (the saying was "children should be seen and not heard"). When he was in school the geography teacher would ask questions, and Don would always say he had been there. The teacher would give him one of those looks like teachers sometimes do.

Don and his sister spent several months in foster care and never knew why!

At a young age Don knew something was going on, but what? They were always on the move - sometimes his father alone and sometimes the whole family.

During the Korean War Don was 16 years old and decided to join the Navy. They were in need of officers, so he was picked to go to the Naval Academy, where he was commissioned as an officer and assigned duty on a ship. He was in charge of the daily operations of the ship but he was also a cryptologist, decoding even the weather reports so the enemy would not know their location.

He met his wife, Katie, in Washington, D.C., on a blind date. They would go on to have a son. Always, Don wondering about his mysterious childhood.

They moved back to Kansas after Don left the Navy to work in Katie's father's service station. There, he met a family friend who got him a job at the bank. The bank sent him to school and transferred him to Pittsburgh, Pa. The couple had another child.

They were going to a banker's convention in San Diego one day and another one in Phoenix when they decided they had a little time to play detective. Don remembered his dad talking about Jerome, Ariz., a mining town. His dad would talk about people walking down the street and falling into the mine. They went to the state capital to the archives and in half an hour found his grandfather's obituary; He had died under mysterious circumstances. They also found 200 references to Don's family.

They looked in Baxter Springs, Texas, and Gardener, Kan., and lo and behold, when he was 62 years old, he found that he had four brothers and one sister. The reason for the nomadic life is his father had two families!

Katie and Don found them in Barstow, Calif. They have visited several times. His "new sister" will be coming to South Carolina in a few weeks and on to Asheville, N.C., to meet the Butlers' daughter.

Don went from bank officer to chief financial officer of the Bank of America and was one of the five VIPs that started the direct deposit for Social Security checks but more than all of this, he and his wife are proud of their effort to solve the mystery. They did find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.