Having missed two weeks of classes to deal with the death of her fiance's father, Alaina Emery logged on to a computer Monday to e-mail a paper to her teacher.

What she found in her inbox sent her reeling.

A stranger had e-mailed her asking if Robert Emery -- the man she'd been trying to find for years -- was her father.

Following a few more e-mail exchanges, Ms. Emery, 25, learned that her father, from whom she'd been estranged since childhood, died in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 27 while trying to rescue three dogs trapped on a highway emergency lane.

In the last few days, Ms. Emery, of Dormont, has been trying to make sense of what happened and why.

"It's really hard for me to grasp. I'm just really empty now. I don't know what to think or feel," said Ms. Emery.

The last time Ms. Emery saw her father, she said, she was only about 7 years old and the family was living in Penn Hills.

The last time they spoke, she was 12.

"I'm really not sure how we lost contact," she said.

Ms. Emery knows that her father had a drug problem and left Pennsylvania for the Florida Keys. Her grandfather continued to keep in touch with his son until about four years ago.

She gave her grandfather a letter to pass along to her dad telling him that she wanted to talk to him, but he never responded.

"I'm not exactly sure why he made the choices he did," Ms. Emery said. "I forgave him a long time ago," said Ms. Emery, who lives with her 18-month-old son and fiance.

The full-time paralegal student had been looking for her father for years. She did searches online and called nationwide directory assistance. In the days before he died, she'd even called a television show that helps to reunite long-lost relatives.

"Throughout my pregnancy, I really had wanted to find him," she said.

Ms. Emery had considered the possibility that her father may have died.

"There was always a chance I wouldn't get to meet him, to get to know him as an adult.

"I'll never know what he sounds like."

When Ms. Emery got the e-mail from a woman named Kellye Nagata, it wasn't clear to her what was going on.

Ms. Nagata had been following the local news in Houston, which had covered Mr. Emery's death extensively. She also knew that the authorities were having difficulty finding any family members to claim his body.

Having located her own birth parents online and 20 to 30 other people who'd been lost, Ms. Nagata said she set out to find someone for Mr. Emery.

It took her just two minutes, she said, to find his daughter.

Three hours after she confirmed that she was Robert Emery's daughter, Ms. Emery received another e-mail from Ms. Nagata, this time linking to a Houston Chronicle story about how her father died.

Mr. Emery had gone to Texas from Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ike. He, along with several other men, had gone to earn a little money and help clean up debris from the storm.

On his way back to his hotel late on the night of Sept. 27, Mr. Emery heard about the dogs trapped on the nearby highway.

As he tried to cross the freeway, Houston police said, he was struck by an oncoming motorcycle. He died at the scene. He was 54.

Since then, there have been a number of stories about Mr. Emery in the Houston media. A nonprofit organization that raises money to help animals abandoned in the foreclosure crisis, No Paws Left Behind, created a fund to raise money for a memorial for Mr. Emery.

Hundreds of people donated, said Joy Harper, a spokeswoman for the group, raising more than $8,000.

While the public outpouring of support and grief provides some comfort, Ms. Emery said, it can't change how she feels.

"It sounds mean, but I don't care about the dogs. I wanted to see my dad," she said. "I feel like no one understands my pain."

In the meantime, Ms. Emery isn't sure what she should do. She'd like to have a proper funeral service for her father -- with a visitation so that she can see him. But it's still unclear if she'll have the right to claim his body.

Ms. Emery believes her father may still be married to his second wife, although they have been separated for many years. She also knows that he has two other children.

"I'm scared that I won't get to see him," she said. "I'm very grateful that I found him, or that he found me, in a way, through his death."