San Leandro-born woman takes DNA test and finds out her father is mother’s primary care physician

“I was proud to be Mexican. I was proud of my father’s family. For example, as a child, I was my father’s daughter.

In pigtails and, as she got older, thick 80s-rimmed glasses, the resemblance between Marlena Velázquez and her mother is strong. And, if you had no reason to doubt it, the man in all of her childhood photographs was her father.

But even as a little girl, Velázquez says something didn’t feel right.

“They said, ‘You’re not Mexican.’ And I would say: “Yes, I am!” Velasquez recalled.

Evidence of her ethnicity and backfire

To prove her ethnicity to childhood skeptics, Velázquez took an ancestral DNA test at age 40.

“I remember I was very impatient. I just wanted to prove to everyone that I am Mexican and he is my dad,” she said.

A few weeks later, the results arrived on her phone.

Having a European mother and a Mexican father, Velasquez was shocked to see that she did not have Mexican DNA. And the surprise didn’t end there. Looking through the list of relatives in the application, she saw a surname that rang an eerie bell.

The name rang an eerie bell

Because it’s on my birth certificate. I was like [expletive],” she said.

The surname belonged to her mother’s doctor in San Leandro. She and her sister knew the name well because their parents were relatively open about their fertility issues. They were under the impression that their mother had been artificially inseminated with their father’s sperm. So, Velasquez never doubted that the man who raised her was her biological father.

Wanting to find answers, Velasquez reached out to the people, who were named close relatives, through the Ancestry app.

More siblings

She found a half-brother in Washington who says his mother was also a patient of the same doctor. He was born in 1974, seven years before Velasquez. Both Velasquez and this half-brother were born at Vesper Memorial Hospital in San Leandro.

Then there is Velázquez’s sister, with whom she grew up. They both believed that their father was their father.. DNA analysis confirmed that they are full siblings, meaning that the fertility doctor has not only used his own sperm on patients at least three times, but has done so at least twice with the same family. According to Velazquez, their mother was pregnant four times by this fertility doctor. Two ended in miscarriages.

The Velasquez sisters want to release the doctor’s name, but he has not been charged with a crime and his name does not appear in the lawsuit. In the 1970s and 1980s, when there were many such cases, there was no law specifically criminalizing the act. Now in California there is a law, but the statute of limitations is three years.

“[Marlena] kept texting me saying your results are ready and I’m like, dude, just shut up. I didn’t look at them. Do not say anything. And I opened it and I looked at it and I just started crying,” Marlena’s sister said.

Velázquez’s sister said she was too concerned about the case to reveal her identity. There was a time when their mother recommended a doctor to be her OB/GYN.

“He was in San Leandro. I remember when I got pregnant with my daughter and mom said, “He’s a great doctor,” she said.

“I was blocked”.

With questions to be answered and both parents dead, Velázquez decided to see a doctor.

“I found the number and left a message,” she said. “I just said, ‘I have questions. Did my parents know that you are biologically my father? And they blocked me.”

“That pissed me off… because what was the point of blocking me? I never insulted him. I called him one day to ask him questions,” she said.

Shortly thereafter, Velasquez contacted NBC’s Bay Area Investigation Unit.

Velazquez addresses the investigative department

Within six months, our team checked the doctor’s name on Velasquez’s birth certificate, found that the San Leandro hospital where she was born no longer exists, and her mother’s medical records were likely destroyed due to routine hospital records.

Candace Nguyen of the Investigation Department contacted the now retired doctor who currently lives out of state. When she asked if he would talk to Velasquez, he agreed.

The doctor declined our team’s request to record the conversation, but told Velazquez that he remembered her case.

He said her parents arranged for an anonymous donor. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, fertility clinics usually didn’t freeze sperm, so they needed a living donor. Apparently, on the day of her mother’s procedure, the donor did not show up. So, the doctor said, he did a favor and used his own sperm.

He said he didn’t tell her parents or anyone else in the medical office.

“I think it was only once. – Accused Doctor

When asked by Bay Area NBC if he ever did it again, the doctor said he “thinks it was only once, but that was so long ago…”

When investigative reporter Candace Nguyen later told him that she had found two more cases—a half-sibling in Washington and Velasquez’s sister—the doctor wrote: “My apologies – it seems the sands of time have erased things I’m not proud of. However, it is impossible to argue with mathematics and science.”

When asked how many times he used his own sperm with unsuspecting patients, he replied: “Only those whose donors did not show up.”

How many times have donors failed to show up? That’s when the doctor ended our email communication.

“Like, [that information] didn’t give much. Because either he really can’t remember, or he just doesn’t want to get himself into trouble,” Velasquez said.

Her sister is meaner.

“I want to know what he did. I’m sure there could be many more people there,” she said.

Part 2 of this investigation will air Friday, February 3, 2023 at 11:00 PM on NBC’s Bay Area News.