Over the years that passed, I would get reminders that Kelz was still out there, thinking about me. I once logged into my Rotten Tomatoes account (in which my profile name was "Fayd") and saw that I had a personal message from someone who used the name of a well-known cartoon character. (Let's say it's "Richie Rich.") Richie asked me if my last name began with an "O." I responded in the affirmative. Richie then wrote back and while I don't remember what was written, it was clear it was Kelz. I did not respond back. Sometime later, I got a personal message from someone else. This person identified herself as Sasd and asked if she could correspond with me because I was like the only father she ever knew. I figured it was Kelz who sent the message and I never responded. I never heard from Richie again on Rotten Tomatoes.
In May of 2003, I was living in a studio apartment in San Diego. By this point, I had a cell phone. I also had a landline phone, which I mainly used for Internet connection. This was the same phone I had when Kelz was living with me in the cottage. I almost always had the adapter unplugged, so the phone would never ring. I would only plug it in when I was expecting a call from my girlfriend, who lived in San Jose. This particular day, the phone rang because I hadn't pulled out the plug. I answered it. "Is this Fayd?" "Yes?" "You know, you're a very hard person to get a hold of." "Uh, who is this?" "You don't recognize my voice?" "No, I don't."
Then the caller said to someone else in the room, "Sasd, keep quiet! I'm on the phone." I then knew who it was. "Hi, Kelz." I wasn't very enthusiastic. She said that since I last spoke to her, she'd gotten married to someone else (not the same guy she had on the invitations) and had four more kids. She had also come through San Diego a couple of weeks prior to see Mr. & Mrs. B. She tried to get a hold of me, but I never answered the phone. I sort of freaked out at this because my girlfriend had just been in town a couple of weeks before. This meant that there had been a chance that we would have run into Kelz! This was frightening!
I told my girlfriend (who would later become my wife) what had just happened. She didn't seem too thrilled that I talked to my ex-girlfriend. I promised her I wouldn't talk to her again. I have kept that promise since.
However, Kelz could still sneak up on me from time to time. In 2007, we were planning our wedding. I talked to Abed, who said he and his girlfriend Keld were going to be coming. They were planning to make it a vacation to San Francisco, where he used to live. We would try to get together and meet one day before the ceremony. He also told me that he had gotten a friend request from someone named Richie on MySpace. Usually, he just approved the requests without looking, but he got a sense that he should check this one out. It turned out it was Kelz. At this point, Kelz was working as a veterinary assistant. He said she asked about me and he told her I was getting married. She seemed disappointed when he told her that.
Around this time, my fiancee started up a MySpace account and she decided to flirt with disaster. I asked her not to, but she sent a friend request to Kelz anyway. Kelz never responded or accepted the request. I was thankful for that.
In 2011, I noticed that Abed was friends with "Richie" on Facebook. When I visited him, I asked if he could show me her Facebook profile. He let me, but she didn't have any photos of herself. It appeared that she had gotten into dark graphic design and only posted her artwork. However, I could tell that she was using her face in some of the designs that featured women in provocative poses.
After that, I would do Google searches on Kelz and Sasd from time to time. In 2010, I found Sasd's birthday listed on a church program for a church in Garner, IA. On the church's website, I found several photos posted of their youth group. Among the children was one black girl. This was obviously Sasd. The website featured several photos that had her in them. It appeared that they enjoyed looking like a diverse congregation. However, I did not find any photos of Kelz.
In October of 2013, after I had started up this blog and the YouTube vlog to go along with it, "Richie" left a comment on my channel trailer. It read, "Very interesting stuff ____________________." She wrote my full real name! She even spelled my middle name correctly, which almost no one does! I freaked out! The first thing I did was delete her comment. I then entered a comment on my own, which read, "Someone had previously left a comment on this video that I had to delete. While I don't have a problem with comments, I would prefer they not contain identifying information." I intended for her to see that message. In the meantime, I noticed that she had apparently watched the channel trailer at least seven times. I told Ms. Ogolon that Kelz had written a comment on one of my videos, but I had deleted it. Other things were going on at the time, so she didn't get much of a chance to get into a huff about it.
Not long after that, she commented on another video in which I discussed a matter that involved me and my brother Loyd. She wrote, "No actually said This is ______ and this is _____... (our real names) Geeze if you are going to tell a story at least get the details right!!" I deleted that comment without an explanation.
Once, when I Googled Kelz, I came across a blog titled, "The Truth about Richie Rich." It was dated October 10, 2013. It started out saying that while everyone thought Richie was a nice person, she really wasn't and had a controversial past. It identified her real name and her real maiden name, so it was definitely about Kelz. It talked about how she had been arrested numerous times in San Diego and had gotten into trouble with the law before in Illinois and Iowa. It also said that she'd had most of her kids taken away from her. But I didn't know if that was referring to the crop of kids she had when she called me in 2003. This blog was obviously written by someone with an ax to grind. They posted it in the hopes that someone would Google her name and find the article. This was the only entry on the blog. About a year ago, I noticed that the post had been deleted. However, the blog itself still remains. (I've found out the hard way that you can't get rid of a blog once you've started it.) I can only imagine that the person who wrote the post had second thoughts and decided to remove the content after a few years.
Sometime after discovering that, I found a GoFundMe page for Kelz. This was probably what brought about that blog post. Apparently, she was suffering from breast cancer at the time and set up the account to raise money for her chemotherapy treatments. The effort only ever raised $10. I have not been able to find that posting since.
I don't know where Kelz is now. I don't know where Sasd is now. I found both their Twitter accounts, but they haven't been active on them in years. Kelz is still active on Facebook. I can't tell if she's still married. I found a relative's obituary from 2015 that listed her husband as a survivor and that she was his spouse. I did find out that her husband is a couple of years older than me, but that's all I really know. Her Facebook page does show how she looks now. She has a tendency to frequently change her hair color.
So, I don't know if I've heard the last of Kelz yet. To tell you the truth, I was half-way expecting her to show up and make comments on this blog to dispute my version of events, but that hasn't happened.
But I'm not closing the book on Kelz yet. Tomorrow, I'm going to have a very lengthy post about something that happened right before she left San Diego 20 years ago this month.
Get ready for some heavy reading.
UPDATE (07/13/18): I found a LinkedIn profile for Sasd. It features a photograph of her. She is wearing glasses. The weird thing is that she looks so much like Kelz when she was that age. She just has darker hair and complexion, but you can definitely tell she's related to Kelz, way more than in the church photos. The profile shows that she graduated from high school in 2015. About a year after graduating, she worked in fast food and retail. It shows that her most recent employment ended in November of 2017 and doesn't have an update. She also doesn't have any connections. I can only assume she set up the account in hopes of finding a job through LinkedIn. All I know is that I am not going to ask to connect with her.
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