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Each year for nearly two decades, the answer Lorayne Axtell got from Dakota County child-support officials was the same.
"Our office is still continuing to try and locate Mr. (Todd Michael) O'Donnell,'' state — word for word — three letters she received in 2003, 2004 and 2005.
"Please be assured that although we have not had recent success, we will continue to try to enforce your court order ... your case will remain open as long as there is an unpaid balance.''
Although disappointed, the 45-year-old West St. Paul woman felt somewhat assured that the county was doing all it could to locate the deadbeat father of her only child and son, now 19, and compel the one-time "Wheel of Fortune'' game-show contestant to pony up more than $41,000 in unpaid child support.
That "open'' pledge suddenly shut in 2006 when Axtell got a letter informing her that the case would be closed. The reason? County investigators had been unable to track down O'Donnell since at least 2002 and "we have not found any information that will allow us to proceed with this case.''
Axtell was stunned.
"Not on a single occasion in 18 1/2 years was Dakota County able to locate O'Donnell, and for the first nine years it was me providing the caseworkers on O'Donnell's whereabouts,'' Axtell told me recently. "I feel like it's a joke all around."
Axtell has good reason to fume. Within 15 minutes, Ed Wunsch, a private investigator I know, located an address and driver's
There are many responsible parents paying child support out there. There are also parents who lose jobs or fall in arrears for other legitimate economic or health reasons.
But Axtell's plight is the rule rather than the exception. Minnesota collected and distributed a record $615 million in child-support payments in fiscal 2007. The state, much to its credit, ranks third-highest in the country in securing such collections. But there's a caveat: $449 million of that figure — about 73 percent — comes from automatic employer garnishment of salaries, not from hunting down and forcing obligors to pay up.
Get this: Hundreds of thousands of children in this state are owed $1.7 billion for fiscal 2007 and years previous. That cumulative figure rises each year.
Nationwide, uncollected arrears since the federal child-support program began in 1975 now exceed $107 billion — and $30 billion alone in 2007. Only 6 percent of that money is collected annually, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
America seems to be the land of the deadbeat parent as well as the land of the free.
'A SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS'
Lorayne Axtell's struggle also raises questions about how much effort goes into locating high debtors like O'Donnell, whose arrears in the Axtell case exceed the national average by $15,000 and are roughly five times the state average.
O'Donnell is also wanted for violating terms of his probation on a 1998 felony theft conviction that essentially closed the doors of a family-owned furniture business in the Twin Cities.
Although he applauds the hard work of child-support-enforcement workers he knows, Wunsch is hardly surprised by Axtell's situation.
"Over the past 10 years, I have probably received over 100 calls from distressed mothers (and fathers) who were trying to find assistance in collecting past-due child supports," said Wunsch, who is also president of Parental Abduction Child Recovery Team. The nonprofit group tries to locate kids taken by noncustodial parents.
"In my humble opinion, it is a sad state of affairs when a mom or dad has a valid court order for child support, the other parent is disregarding that court order and the parent with the order can get no help from the state,'' he added.
Axtell doesn't really care about the money.
"This is not about the money,'' said Axtell, a longtime Northwest Airlines employee. "It's about the way the county has dealt with this, as well as trying to get some justice for my son. He's the real victim in this."
Axtell's out-of-wedlock relationship with O'Donnell lasted barely 18 months. But he admitted during a 1988 court hearing that he was the father of Todd, then 5 months old. He also agreed to pay $166 a month in child support and have it garnished from his monthly salary as a worker at a Richfield temporary-employment agency.
Court documents indicate that O'Donnell at the time was supposedly paying a total of $172 a month in child-support payments for two other sons, who were 2 and 4 years old in 1988, and had different mothers. Neither woman could be located by press time. State and Dakota County officials say data-privacy laws keep them from discussing any of the cases.
'THEY LET HIM WALK'
Payments to Axtell — and never the full monthly amount — came few and far between over the next nine years. Axtell said she contacted county caseworkers whenever she learned of O'Donnell's whereabouts.
In March 1995, as she walked through her front door with a pizza in her hand, she heard a familiar voice from the TV set.
O'Donnell was on TV, spinning for luck on "Wheel of Fortune."
"That was a big dream of his when we were together in the early days,'' Axtell said. O'Donnell won $1,200, she recalled.
"I called the caseworker the next day," Axtell said. "But they told me there was nothing that they could do, that the show was taped and that he was long gone by then."
A Dakota County administrative law judge found O'Donnell in default in 1993 and ordered him jailed for 90 days. But the civil contempt-of-court order was stayed to give O'Donnell time to resolve the unpaid child support.
When that failed, Vance Grannis, an assistant county prosecutor, successfully moved in court in February 1997 to have the stay lifted and O'Donnell sent to jail. But in what Axtell still describes as ''incomprehensible,'' Grannis asked the judge to vacate the decision a month later.
"When I was preparing the order to have the stay lifted, I discovered the underlying contempt order had expired on Sept. 9, 1996,'' Grannis wrote to the judge, Martha Simonett.
O'Donnell would not go to jail after all.
"They had him 10 years ago, and they let him walk,'' Axtell said. "The frustrating part is that you feel like you are the one up against the wall and that they are working for him.''
'I NEED TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT'
Unknown to Axtell at the time, O'Donnell was facing charges in Ramsey County for embezzling almost $13,000 during a four-month period in late 1995 from a now-defunct Futon Gallery Furniture store in Roseville, where he worked as a manager.
O'Donnell, who ultimately pleaded guilty to felony theft charges, blamed "long-standing" depression for his crime.
"I made a mistake and I will do what I have to do to make it right,'' O'Donnell told Ramsey County District Judge Edward Wilson at his Feb. 17, 1998, sentencing. "And, you know, if I suffered from depression, I still know the difference between right and wrong, and I need to make things right.''
Apparently not. Wilson granted him a break: a jail term of a year and a day that was stayed as long as O'Donnell met the terms of 10 years' probation and paid more than $12,700 in restitution to Kathy Stoler, owner of the Futon Gallery Furniture chain.
O'Donnell essentially thumbed his nose at the judge and the law and flew the coop. Wilson signed a still-active but nonextraditable felony bench warrant for O'Donnell's arrest six months after the sentencing.
"He not only hurt our business, but I have yet to see a dime from him,'' said Stoler, who declared bankruptcy after another $60,0000 insider-theft case was uncovered at her Minnetonka store.
Stoler moved to Oregon four years ago and runs a successful Spanish eatery with her husband in McMinnville, a town of 26,000 about 30 miles southwest of Portland. She describes O'Donnell much the same as Axtell and others who know him or know of him.
"He had such potential,'' Stoler said. "He is a charming, handsome and very smart guy who for some reason couldn't direct all that talent in a positive way.''
'I BELIEVE HE IS A COWARD'
Wunsch last week tracked O'Donnell to a residential address in the 100 block of Poinsettia Street in Atlantic Beach, Fla. The oceanfront community of 14,000 about 15 miles east of Jacksonville, is no ghetto by any means: The median condo/home value exceeds $282,000.
In a surprising coincidence, Todd Axtell received an e-mail from his father more than a week ago. It was the first time in 17 years O'Donnell had contacted his namesake, who will turn 20 on Monday.
"I do want you to know that it is ok to feel anger or disappointment with me,'' he states in the e-mail, which was forwarded to me by Todd Axtell. "I can take it. I have had to live with this for over twenty years.''
O'Donnell, who sent pictures of what he looks like now, describes himself as a college-attending mortgage broker and father of three young children. He reportedly has been married to the children's mother, a Minnesota native, for 10 years.
He claims to have graduated with an MBA from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. But a school spokesman told me there is no record of O'Donnell either attending the school or obtaining such a degree.
There's credible but also dubious stuff in the e-mail, like claims of traveling the world for a year around the time he was being prosecuted here.
There is absolutely no mention of child-support arrears, fugitive status, theft conviction or his whereabouts, other than that he resides ''two blocks from the ocean.''
Todd Axtell's Father's Day wish is that O'Donnell finally owns up.
"I don't understand how you can just have kids and not even care about what happened or happens to them,'' said Todd Axtell, an Apple Valley High School graduate who works at an Inver Grove Heights restaurant and plans to pursue college courses this fall.
"I believe he is a coward,'' he added. "How can a kid go 19 years without even a card on their birthday or Christmas? He really doesn't care about anyone but himself, and I'm a strong believer in karma and believe everything will come back to him in the end."
Not surprisingly, I could not reach O'Donnell for comment. The Yahoo e-mail address he used to communicate with his son expired within two days of his message.
I guess I'm now the latest person O'Donnell is not getting in touch with, along with at least three Minnesota mothers, Stoler and Ramsey County, which has not been paid $195 in court-assessed fees in the 1998 theft case.
Wunsch said opening and closing e-mail accounts is a common ploy for Internet-savvy folks who want to cover their tracks.
"Let's try to stay focused on who the real losers are in these cases,'' Wunsch said. "It is not the parent; it is the children. Who is looking out for them?"
Rubén Rosario can be reached at rrosario@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5454.
CHILD-SUPPORT FACTS AND FIGURES
About 165,000 children who have a Minnesota child-support case were born outside of marriage.
Sources: Minnesota Department of Human Services; U.S. Office of Child Support Enforcement
