KETCHIKAN-- Shauna Lee makes clear that her dad, Gus Peterson, is a phenomenal father, and he's been there for her since she was 16 years old, when he and her mother, Candy Peterson, married.
Lee's biological father was a lifelong mystery, though, and Lee said she had always wanted to know something about this person named Eugene Price, the 19-year-old listed as "father" on her birth certificate.
Lee said she started actively searching for Price when she was about 15, now close to 30 years ago. She didn't have much information, she said: just his name, his age at the time of her birth and the state where he was living when he had a brief relationship with her mother.
Lee looked up every Eugene Price she could find in California, and said she phoned probably 40 of them with no luck. Finally, a few years ago, she stopped looking.
On April 30, though, Lee's adopted sister got a phone call from her own late biological father's family. They had been searching for Lee's sister, who suddenly had all kinds of new relatives she never had known about.
That made their mother feel guilty about Lee's situation, and after some encouragement from a friend, her mother gave Lee more details about her birth father.
With that new information, Lee said, she was able to track down her birth father's ex-wife in Texas. Lee called Beverly Price, who immediately confirmed that Eugene, who prefers to be called Gene, was Lee's father.
"She just started spilling information," Lee said. "I was shaking so bad that I could not even take in everything she was saying to me."
Then Beverly Price asked whether Lee wanted Gene Price's telephone number in Arkansas, where he now lives.
"I said, 'I guess,' " Lee said.
She dialed the number; a man answered. She said, "Is this Gene Price?" He said yes. She told him who she was.
"He said, 'Oh, my God! I've wondered about you. I'm so glad you found me,' " Lee said, adding that the moment was overwhelming.
In a telephone interview from Arkansas, Gene Price said he almost fainted when he got the call from Lee.
"I kinda knew that she was out there somewhere, but her mother never came forward and told me," he said. "In the back of my mind, I pretty well knew, but I didn't know absolutely.
"It's been 45 years. That's a shock after all this time."
After he got over the initial shock, he said, he was able to talk to Lee and learn about her life.
"Shauna seems to be a very nice, fun girl," he said. "I don't know why she wanted to get in touch with me."
They talked for a long time during that first phone call, Lee said, and they have talked nearly weekly ever since. She learned she has two half-brothers and a half-sister, a 90-year-old grandfather and more. Gene Price later sent her a letter, with handwriting eerily like her own, Lee said, and Beverly Price sent family photos, including pictures of Gene Price when he was in his late teens.
When she saw those photos, Lee said, the resemblance was clear.
"I'm like, 'There's my nose,' " she said. "It was so strange to see my face" in the photos.
She also was able to talk with some of her new family members, including her new half-sister, Cindy, who had a falling-out with Gene Price many years ago. The first couple of e-mails were tentative, Lee said, but now she and hew new sister communicate regularly.
It turns out that Lee's half-sister has visited Ketchikan, and attended a performance at the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show where Lee works.
"I took her ticket," Lee said, adding that she and Cindy even agree on which lumberjack they like best.
Lee soon will be able to learn much more about her new relatives. Gene, Cindy and Lee's half-brothers, Steven and Scott, are due to arrive in Ketchikan on July 22. Those who hadn't been to Alaska before had always wanted to come, Lee said, and they considered her entry into their lives to be a sign that they should make the trip.
Price said he's looking forward to the visit. He made it as far as Bellingham, Wash., years ago, he said.
"I've wanted to go to Alaska for years and years but never made it up there," he said, adding that he hopes everyone will get along. "I'm just coming up there to go fishing and see Shauna."
He said he had hoped his father could come, too, but the 90-year-old didn't feel up to the long trip.
Price said that of all the family members' reactions to the news about Shauna, he loved his father's the best.
"I told him he had another grandkid, and he says to me, 'What?' " Price said. "I explained it to him and he ... said, 'What in the hell is she doing in Alaska?' I got a kick out of that."
Candy Peterson said she's very excited about Lee finding her biological father, and that they will get to meet after all this time.
By LEILA KHEIRY
Ketchikan Daily News