(Enlarge) Mark Hoffman,with his children before the Catonsville native left the area more than 20 years ago. Hoffman, now homeless, spent some time in North Carolina before returning to his roots in Baltimore County this past summer. He disappeared in September. (Photo courtesy Kimberly Bono)

Her father is Mark Hoffmann, a 51-year-old Catonsville native and homeless man who frequented downtown Frederick Road last summer.

Sometime in late September, apparently feeling offended or threatened or both, Hoffmann left Catonsville and his tenuous connection with family and friends there, according to Bono, who lives in Gainesville, Va.

It was the second time the 27-year-old had lost contact with him.

Before she encountered him last July in Catonsville, she had last seen her father almost 20 years ago.

Bono was 8 in July 1989 when he visited her and her two younger sisters for a last time before disappearing from their lives.

He had been diagnosed in 1988 with a form of mental illness and his marriage to Bono's mother had ended in divorce.

Bono never knew what happened to him or where he lived until last June, when Hoffmann surfaced as the topic of a news story published on the Internet by the Greensboro (N.C), News & Record.

The homeless man that many Greensboro citizens knew of and cared for, had departed that town after seven years, leaving them to fear for his safety as Bono does now, she said.

By chance, a Greensboro resident visiting Catonsville in July noticed him attending Mass at St. Mark Catholic Church, on Melvin Avenue, and relayed the information back to Greensboro, she said.

Within days, St. Mark pastoral associate Nora Reiter advised Bono that she might find Hoffmann almost any morning in the church's prayer garden.

Bono credits God rather than coincidence with reuniting her with the father she had thought since childhood was lost to her forever.

On July 11, after driving four hours from Pennsylvania and her home at the time, she entered the prayer garden and found him sitting on a bench.

"I had no expectations," she said, adding that she realized he suffered from some form of mental illness.

While Hoffmann did not seem to recognize Bono, he remembered her as his child, she said.

She visited him several times over the summer, bringing her husband and baby daughter to find him most afternoons sitting on a Frederick Road bench, near the corner of Newburg Avenue.

As he had done while living homeless in Greensboro, Hoffmann rejected offers from everyone, including her, for permanent shelter or a home.

Now, she wonders whether she ever will see him again.

"My biggest worry is that someone is going to hurt him," she said

One of Hoffmann's relatives, who lives in Catonsville and had finally persuaded him to visit her house in September, declined to comment for this article.

Bono believes that an incident during that visit may have prompted him to leave town.

She said she learned that someone had noticed Hoffmann sitting on the relative's porch and yelled that his kind were not wanted in the area.

"What 'kind' is that?" she said. "A human being?"

In addition, she heard reports that Hoffmann had also been threatened with bodily harm, she said.

For Reiter, who befriended Hoffmann and forwarded gifts to him from people in Greensboro, his departure counted as a loss for Catonsville.

"I pray for him every day," she said. "Mark put a face on homelessness for me.

"Our parishioners have said the same thing."

She and others said they have spotted someone who resembled him in Baltimore this fall.

While in Catonsville, he had shoulder length blonde hair and typically wore white sneakers, gray pants and a dark coat and carried a blue-and-white umbrella.

Anyone having information about Mark Hoffmann's whereabouts should call police at 410-744-1584.

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