by Mike Chalek
If having my questions answered had been the only issue at stake, it might have made sense for me to let my search end with the receipt of that letter. After all, I knew the answers to a few of the most pertinent questions. I knew my birth mother’s thoughts and motivations at the time of relinquishment. I knew of her feelings for me. I also understood that reunion might never be possible if she had already passed away.
What still remained, however, was the unanswerable question of my identity and my place in the world. This need to trace one’s roots is not limited to adoptees in search of living blood relatives. The popularity of genealogical research is a world-wide phenomenon. Online ancestry forums and paid family tree sites are a booming business, and all because it is part of the natural human condition to seek out and know who our ancestors were and what they accomplished, or failed to accomplish. We draw strength from our family lore, and decide whether to emulate our relatives, or to balk family tradition to make our own paths. In this way we are empowered to decide our own fate. We think, “I am just like my father,” and it becomes true. Or we think, “I am nothing like my father,” and also strive to make that a reality, even though we frequently find that our inherited traits and dispositions are harder to escape than we would ever have imagined.
I knew that I had decided I was going to be nothing like my adoptive family. I was glad of it; glad that not a drop of their DNA lived inside my cells. But who was I? Did I have a brother somewhere who looked just like me? Nieces or nephews? A grandfather who would have loved to know me when he was alive, because we had so much in common?
Because of these questions that could never be answered without a chance to ask them in the presence of someone who shared my blood, the letter did not stop me in my quest. It did, for a time, make the search a pointless and dead end task. I talked to a few other “Fielding babies” (as we referred to ourselves) who were conducting searches of their own. None of them had met with any more success than I in obtaining their biological histories. I hired another set of investigators, who took my money gladly and came up empty handed again.
Then, one Monday morning on November 2, 1998, the universe sent me a gift. It came in the form of a newspaper article I read over my morning coffee; an article whose contents caused me to get up out of my chair and hop in my car for a fifteen minute drive to a neighboring town.
The article was a short news piece about a feisty little private investigator named Virginia Snyder, who was under fire for one of her most recent investigations.
Ms. Snyder owed part of her fame to her history as one of the first female private investigators to be licensed in the state of Florida. She had made a huge name for herself in the late twentieth century by obtaining evidence sufficient to free several death row inmates, or to get their sentences downgraded. The subsequent fallout was unpleasant for many of the police officers and prosecuting attorneys in the state. She suffered ongoing harassment from the local police force and eventually sued them in return. At his retirement party, one police chief was reported to have hung her picture on a wall where he proceeded to shoot at it, aiming square in the middle of her forehead. It was a dart gun that he held in his hands, of course, but his aim was true. The assembled members of his force were for the most part amused by the performance. They disliked Virginia for their own reasons, mostly because she had denounced them all as incompetent rednecks at one point or another.
The fact that Virginia was, at the time of the party, a 69-year-old “granny” who stood all of 5’2” (and went to great lengths to appear harmless and nondescript) made her quarrel with the police department all the more surreal. But her appearance hid a fierce determination and a passion for justice. That determination, and the nature of the investigation that was profiled in the newspaper article, were what spurred me into action and had me traveling down the road to her little hometown of Delray Beach. Because Virginia had just made national news for locating an adult adoptee’s birth mother, and even though the case was turning in a sour direction I held out hope that she might be willing to help me as well.
I entered Virginia’s office space in her historic home—the oldest in all of Delray—early on that Monday morning and waited for a chance to speak with her. In my hands I held a copy of the letter from Josette Marquess. While I waited, I conducted a silent argument with myself that centered mainly around not getting my hopes up too high.
When Virginia finally invited me into her office, I found her just as the newspaper described. She was now 77 years old, with short gray hair that framed a round face and friendly eyes. The eyes peered out from behind large rimmed glasses that exaggerated the appearance of age and motherliness. I tried without success to imagine how she had managed to infuriate such a large number of people, all while earning the numerous prestigious awards that lined her walls.
“Mr. Chalek,” she said. “What can I do for you today?”
“I saw the article in the newspaper this morning,” I said, by way of introduction.
“Ah,” Virginia replied. “Yes, I’m afraid we managed to locate someone who clearly did not want to be found.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. I placed my letter on the desk before me. “I would like to find someone, too.”
Virginia reached for the letter, pushing her glasses up her nose as she did so.
“Another birth mother search,” she said, glancing at the first page.
“Yes. I know it may not be the first thing you want to do right now, with the current publicity and all, but if you read the letter you can see that I think my own birth mother would be quite open to hearing from me.”
Virginia looked up at me.
“You know, most birth mothers are, in my experience,” she said. “This particular woman in the article is more of an exception than the rule.”
I fell quiet, then, and let her return to the letter. When she finished the last page, I blurted out, “There’s nothing more I can do, is there?”
She smiled a tight little smile then, and her eyes widened with excitement.
“Oh no, Mike,” she said. “I believe there is much you can do.”
She laughed, a short barking sound that betrayed a hint of the woman who had taken on whole police forces and won.
“You are holding the smoking gun,” she told me. “You’ve been holding it all along and didn’t even know it.”
* * * * * *
Next, Virginia began to spell out a plan of how I was going to go about walking into the courthouse in Gainesville that very afternoon to present my demands for my adoption record to be opened. Her premise was simple, but powerful.
“The letter says it all right here,” she told me. “You even highlighted the sentence yourself. The courts knew that your birth mother signed her consent with a fictitious name. They knew that the name on your original birth certificate was also false. And most important, pay attention here! The key is, they didn’t do anything to fix it. They signed off on the adoption with all of the falsified information.”
“Mike,” she said. “That’s fraud.”
“You don’t think I need a lawyer to do this?” I asked her.
“Well, if you can afford one, it would help,” she answered. “But no, I think you can go right into that courthouse and ask them to show you where they keep the legal forms. Tell the clerk you’re filing to have your sealed adoption record opened. She can direct you to where they keep those sorts of requests, the blank templates and such.”
“Because of this letter?” I asked.
“It’s an official letter, from an official appointee, who looked into the official court documents. Yes, I believe it’s enough,” she said.
I took back the letter and stood up from my chair.
“Thank you,” I told her. Despite my increasing nervousness at the audacity of what I was about to do, I felt a strong certainty that she was right and that this would be the most productive step of my entire quest.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “
Thank me when it works.”
I left Virginia’s house in Delray in a bit of a mental fog. I can’t remember much of the four and a half hour drive that I made up to Gainesville. Events were moving at a breakneck pace, and I felt more like I was being carried along for the ride than directing the flow. I also, despite Virginia’s assurances and my own sense of certainty, knew that I was a very small individual who was about to take on a very large judicial system.
Well, I thought, it all worked out for David in the Bible story didn’t it? He had five smooth stones and a slingshot to bring down Goliath. I have five sheets of typewritten paper and a fill-in-the-blank legal form. I pressed down on the accelerator and made my way into Gainesville.
Chapter 5
If you’ve never traveled to the southern states of the US, your ideas of the deep south probably are based on what you are shown in movies and television. That’s all right, because the Alachua County Courthouse in Gainesville is a setting so stereotypically southern that it would have fit right in as the backdrop for any film. It is flanked by huge oak trees whose long tendrils of Spanish moss flow in the breeze. The air is heavy with humidity and the scent of rich earth, even in the winter months. The building itself imparts a sense of tradition and authority to all who pass it by, or enter its hushed and hallowed chambers.
Alachua County has a booming population of, well, a whole 250,000 people. So the courthouse, on that fateful afternoon in November of 1998, wasn’t exactly bustling with activity. The clerk eyed me disinterestedly as I approached his desk.
“I’d like to file a petition,” I told him.
“Do you have the papers with you?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“I can’t give you legal advice or help you fill anything out,” he said. “You have to talk to a lawyer for that.”
“I know what I want to say. I just need you to show me where to get the blank forms and I’ll fill it out myself.”
He sighed.
“Ok. Down this hallway you’ll find a room that serves as our library. Which form do you need?”
“I want to file to open my sealed adoption records,” I said.
The clerk raised his eyebrows at that, but told me how to access a blank form and make a photocopy.
I thanked him and went to retrieve the petition. It took only a few minutes before I was back at his desk.
“I know you said you can’t give any advice…” I began.
I could tell that he wasn’t going to like me very much. He looked at me wordlessly.
“But I am not sure what I’m supposed to do with this part of the form,” I finished.
He waited a few more seconds, obviously deciding how he was going to get rid of me. I kept an innocent and slightly helpless look plastered on my face, hoping for favor.
“It’s almost impossible to get those records unsealed,” he finally said.
“I know, but I have proof that my adoption was filed fraudulently,” I told him.
“Proof?” he repeated.
I opened my file and showed him the letter.
“This letter from the state reunion registry says it, right here.”
The clerk’s look was now openly curious.
“Well, then, that’s what you say. You are filing a petition to unseal the adoption records, so you’ve got the name of the document. Now you just write it down. And who committed the fraud? The courts?”
“Sort of, but mostly it was the baby broker and the lawyers and my birth mother, because she signed everything using a fake name and they all knew it.”
“Hmm…” he replied. “Well, I can’t give you advice. But I’ve heard that called “fraud on the court” before. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway,” he stared at me meaningfully while he related this information.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying in here, that they committed fraud on the court.”
I was taking furious mental notes, while maintaining a casual and conversational air.
“Well, when you’ve got it all filled out, you just bring it back over here,” he told me.
His meaning was clear. I left his desk quickly and sat down to complete my petition.
When I was finished, this is what I had created: A Motion to Unseal Adoption Records, with a loosely paraphrased reasoning that the birth mother had filed everything with a fictitious name, and that my own birth name was fictitious as well, that the court had known this, and had done nothing to correct it. For good measure, I let the judge know that I had been raised in an abusive and unhappy adoptive home.
I signed the paper, attached a copy of Josette’s letter as a supporting exhibit, and handed the pages over to the clerk.
“Let me call the judge’s assistant, the JA,” he said.
“Should I leave?” I asked.
“Well, there’s no telling when they’ll actually consider your petition. But if you want to wait around a bit and come back, there’s a good cafe across the street that all the lawyers like to visit on their lunches.”
I took his advice and went out for a quick bite to eat. But an abundance of nervous energy drove me back to pacing the courthouse within half an hour.
* * * * * *
Surprising both me and the clerk, the JA was soon approaching us across the waiting room.
“Mr. Chalek?” she asked.
“That’s me,” I replied.
“If you would follow me,” she instructed.
We headed upstairs, to the office of one Honorable Robert P. Cates, Circuit Judge of Alachua County Florida.
“The judge has reviewed your petition,” the JA told me.
Already? I wondered.
“He would like to know why you want to have your adoption record opened. And he’d like to speak to you personally.”
The pace of events was still leaving me breathless. I could only nod in assent.
I was taken into the judge’s chambers, where I was seated in front of another large desk, the third time that day I had faced a stranger, ready to tell my story and ask for a miracle.
The judge had a banker’s box full of files next to him. A large piece of red tape had been cut off of it.
Judge Cates looked at me as if I were a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.
“I have your petition,” he said. “And I have your adoption record.”
He gestured toward the box of files.
“I’m curious, Mr. Chalek, what your motivations are in requesting your adoption records be opened.”
“Well,” I started. I cleared my throat and began again, “I’d like to find my birth mother. I’d like to know who I am. My adoptive parents died years ago, and they were no parents to me at all. I know that my birth mother wanted to keep me. I know she would want to hear from me.”
The judge raised his hand to stop me.
“So reunion is your ultimate goal?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“I’m willing to grant your petition,” he told me.
I felt the earth move beneath my feet.
And so Goliath falls.
Judge Cates wasn’t finished.
“However,” he said. “There is protocol to be followed in these circumstances.”
More red tape, I thought wryly.
“I must send an order to the Department of Children and Family Services requiring them to file good reason why I should not release your records to you,” he finished.
I thought for a moment.
“Would that be the same department as run by Ms. Marquess?” I asked him.
“It is. And if she can’t give me good reason why I shouldn’t release your file, I will direct them to produce a copy for you from their microfiched records.”
I eyed the original file that I knew was buried somewhere in the box beside him.
“I’ll send the letter to Ms. Marquess’ office today,” he said, ignoring my pointed glance. “We’ll be in touch.”
I thanked him. The JA showed me out o
f the chambers.
* * * * * *
Despite the clear victory I had just achieved, I wasn’t leaving Gainesville just yet, or the courthouse. I asked the clerk to direct me to the nearest pay phone, and I called Josette’s number.
“This is Jo,” she answered.
“Jo, this is Mike Chalek,” I said. “You wrote me a letter a few years ago, with non-identifying information on my birth mother and my adoption.”
“Yes,” she said. “I remember.”
I didn’t ask why she remembered me, one case out of many. I was getting the idea that the fraudulent activity surrounding my adoption was a bit of a big deal, based on the reactions of the clerk, the JA and Judge Cates.
“Well, I filed a petition today in Alachua County to have my adoption records unsealed, because of the fictitious name my birth mother used in the paperwork. And the judge is willing to grant my petition.”
“That’s wonderful,” Jo said. She seemed sincere.
“It’s amazing, right? But the thing is, the judge says he is sending you a request for your office to provide good reason why my records shouldn’t be opened.”
“Has he already sent it?”
“I don’t know. But I just wanted to call and see how you might feel about the matter.”
“I have absolutely no objections to you getting the contents of your sealed adoption record,” she told me. “In fact, you can always see if his office would fax the request over, and I’ll get the letter sent back right away.”
“Give me your fax number, and I’ll go back into the courthouse,” I said. I scribbled the number inside my folder.
I’m sure the clerk was thrilled to see my face again.
“Can I talk to the JA one more time?” I asked.
“I’ll need to tell her what it’s about,” the clerk said.
“Well, I’ve got a fax number to give to her.”
The clerk sighed, apparently a common habit of his. He dialed up to the judge’s chambers.