I Googled My Long-Lost Father’s Name. My Stomach Dropped When I Saw What He’d Done.

For most of my life, I pretended not to care about not knowing my dad. But I did. I cared a lot.

I had one photo of him for years. He is 17 or 18, shirtless on a couch in what looked like a cluttered apartment. There was a bowl of cereal on the table, but also a bottle of vodka, leaving you to wonder if it was morning or afternoon. I learned later that days frequently ran together for him, so it could have been either. 

In the photo, he’s wearing a straw hat and has a sly little smile, staring right at the camera with these bright, almost sapphire-blue eyes. Even in that faded photo, they sparkled.

That photo disappeared somewhere along the way, but the image has never left me. Neither did the desire to understand the man in it.

In 1982, I was 12 years old. My mom and the man who would become my adoptive father had hired a private detective to find my birth dad. They needed him to sign away his parental rights to finalize the adoption.

He did. Gladly. He put up no fight, and apparently, he had no hesitation. The detective said he had a new baby girl and was ready to start fresh. Signing me away was just paperwork — and a way to avoid child support.

And just like that, I knew three things:

1. My dad wasn’t dead. 

2. I had a sister somewhere.

3. He didn’t want me.

I think that’s when I started saying out loud that I didn’t care. It was easier to pretend I never wanted him either. If I didn’t want him first, I won. At least that’s what I told myself.

But I did think about him. A lot.

I developed a game. I’d scan the crowd in airports or at malls and wonder, Is that guy my dad? 

I had a recurring dream about him for years. He would call me, and we’d talk like I imagined a real father and son would talk. Then he would suddenly change. He’d forget who I was or get angry and ask why I was calling him. At some point, I trained myself to wake up before we got to that part. Eventually, I would learn not to answer the phone in that dream. One day, those dreams stopped altogether.

I was never angry at him — not really — until I became a father myself. When my daughter was born, I realized I had no idea how to be a dad. When my son came along, it hit even harder. I had no model, no blueprint. I had to figure it out as I went, and I resented the hell out of that. For the first time in my life, I was angry at him. Really angry.

Still, I stayed curious. 

When the internet showed up, I started hunting for him — late-night web searches that never led anywhere.

Then one night, years later, I saw a guy on TV with the same name as my dad. He was too young to be him, but it triggered the desire to search again. 

I Googled his name and up popped a listing on the Sex Offender Registry database. My stomach dropped.

It was the same name as my dad but the birthdate was a year off. I didn’t want to click the photo. I hoped it wasn’t him. But I clicked.

It was him. Older. Heavier. Balding a little. But there were those blue eyes.

He was listed as a “violent sexual offender” and was wanted for violating parole. His last known address was the streets of Los Angeles.

That was worse than anything I’d imagined. Suddenly, the man I had romanticized as a wandering soul or misunderstood rebel was just … broken. Possibly dangerous. Definitely lost.