Washington woman, 25, locates father she never met — at San Jose jail
By Lisa Fernandez


lfernandez@mercurynews.com

Posted: 09/22/2009 09:14:43 PM PDT
Updated: 09/22/2009 10:07:09 PM PDT


Megan McKenzie has spent most of her life scouring the planet for her dad. Once, she even used baby-sitting money to hire a private investigator. Finally this summer, the Washington state resident found the man she believes is her father.

Turns out, he lives in San Jose. On the eighth floor of the Santa Clara County Main Jail.

But that doesn't matter to McKenzie, who is still determined to fulfill her lifelong dream to meet her father, Michael Dean Olson.

She insists she has no fantasies about a Hollywood-style reunion or visions of perfect Christmas dinners with a 55-year-old man who suffers from schizophrenic tendencies and substance abuse. In fact, she's waiting until he leaves the floor for the mentally ill at the San Jose jail, and possibly returns to Elmwood Correctional Facility in Milpitas, where visiting hours are longer, before she arranges her first visit.

"I don't expect anything from him," McKenzie said. "I never expected him to be a knight in shining armor."

In a way, it's Olson's foibles that draws his daughter to him.

"It's my obligation to reach out," she said.

McKenzie said her mother suffers from mental illness and substance abuse, too. Her mother raised McKenzie, who has a bachelor's degree in nursing and now works with the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

But her mother never told her daughter who fathered her, thinking it was for her own good.

That just wasn't satisfying






to McKenzie. Did her father ever think about her? What happened to him? What was he like?

Finally, "Was I like him?" she wanted to know.

"I had abandonment issues growing up," McKenzie said. "Little girls want to please their dads. Not having a dad to please was disappointing. Every time Father's Day came around, I thought there was no point. I just felt that he was somewhere under the same sky. And if it was meant to be, I'll find him."

In July, McKenzie's daughter, Ellie, was fast approaching her first birthday. McKenzie kept "badgering" her mother about her origins, and said her mother ultimately broke. Your father's name is Michael Dean Olson, she told her. He's in his 50s.

Her mother said she and Olson had met in early 1983 at the Elmwood jail, where they both were arrested on DUI charges. After they got out, they partied together. They also conceived a baby. Then they parted ways.

McKenzie went to work, putting his name and every birth date connected to any Michael Olson ever convicted in California into the Santa Clara County public inmate database. On July 26, she got a hit. As fate would have it, a Michael Dean Olson had just been arrested that day on battery charges for allegedly assaulting a police officer. The jail e-mailed her his booking shot. She saw the eyes, and she knew.

"I know it's him," the 25-year-old McKenzie said. "We have the same puppy dog blue eyes."

In a recent jailhouse interview with the Mercury News, Olson answered questions briefly, but he wasn't able to expound. He said most of his arrests were alcohol-related, and that he suffers from "organic delusionary syndrome." He worked for a time at the now-defunct Ford plant, but said he hasn't held down a solid job for about 20 years. He said he's been saving his daughter's letters in a box in his cell.

"I feel good about meeting her," he said. "Scared good."

McKenzie is now engaged to be married. And Ellie turned 1 in August. She hopes her daughter will one day meet her grandpa even if they have to speak through glass.

All three have the same set of blue eyes.

interesting