Features

Teacher’s story of missing uncle inspires creative writing class

DNA test reveals deep-rooted secret

Leena Macklin, Feature Editor

January 24, 2024

In 1956, English teacher Blaine Christen’s uncle, Leo Christen, went missing. His car was found near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Ranae Duncan

Trying to inspire his first-hour Intro. to Creative Writing class for their nonfiction narrative projects right before winter, English teacher Blaine

Christen told the unsolved, true story of his uncle who went missing and shocked the class with its ending.

“I was like, that’s insane,” sophomore creative writing student Lilianna Sherfield said, “I was just dumbfounded.”

Blaine told his story to inspire a more journalistic style of creative writing and to promote the idea that everyone has a story to tell.

Christen’s Story:

Christen’s uncle was declared missing by the San Francisco Police Department after finding his abandoned car in a parking lot by the Golden Gate Bridge in 1956; shortly after, he was presumed dead. It took years before the truth was revealed.

Leo Christen was raised in Custer County, Nebraska, with his four other siblings, but he moved to California and married Grace Chiarenza in 1949 and became a salesman. He had two daughters, but 18 days after the second was born, he vanished.

“News articles from the day state that his wife last saw him on Monday, March 11, [1956] when he went to work,” Blaine said. “Police officers found his car on Wednesday the 13th, in a parking lot near the Golden Gate Bridge.”

With a note left on the car, police and his family believed Leo to have committed suicide. He was notorious for a gambling addiction, which the family believes led to his undoing. Chiarenza reported that two bills came to her from horse racing shortly before Leo’s disappearance. Carl Christen, Leo’s youngest brother, also recalled that he had seen Leo meeting up with a strange man a few years before he disappeared.

“Carl Christen, Leo’s youngest brother, spent part of a summer with Leo and his family and even traveled with him on his bakery sales route,” Blaine said, “Carl said that Leo would make random stops to use the phone or to ‘talk with a guy.’ Sometimes, money would exchange hands.”

A few days later, authorities informed his family that the police picked up a man with the same description for a vacancy in Reno, Nev. Two family members drove from Nebraska to Reno to see if they could identify the man, but by the time they arrived, the man was already out of custody.

“Police said they had held him as long as they could,” Blaine Christen said.

The two family members returned to their home in Nebraska with no new leads, but despite Leo’s disappearance, Chiarenza continued to look for him. While she did find some hope in Reno from a Casino and a building company that recognized his description, both leads ultimately turned up nothing. Chiarenza returned to San Francisco without any closure.

“No further evidence ever surfaced that Leo Christen was still alive,” Blaine said, “Theories, rumors, and legends have persisted over the years. Some family members believe that Leo jumped from that bridge and died. Others believe that he faked his death and went into hiding.”

The case went cold with a few coincidences along the way that never resulted in any new information. While the story has been told many times throughout the family, there was no break. That was until Blaine took an ancestry DNA test.

“I do a lot of genealogy stuff anyway, and I just thought it would be kind of cool to see,” Blaine said.

Looking into genealogy has become a common occurrence; according to the National Library of Medicine, about 26 million people have used direct-to-consumer DNA tests, such as 23 and Me,

There have been stories that show how DNA tests uncover deep secrets hidden along family lines. People have discovered that they have more siblings than they thought or have found out that they are actually from a different family according to USA Today.

Blaine said his original goal was to find out where his ancestors were from. What he didn’t expect was that his results finally revealed the answer to the family mystery that had been looming over their heads for generations. He didn’t expect his results to become one of “those stories.”

While taking the test, his top result showed a woman he had never met. He sent her an email explaining how he had taken the test and wanted to know who she was.

“She responded and said, ‘Maybe you can tell me who I am because I never knew my father,’” Blaine said.

Blaine’s newly found cousin shared photos and stories between her dad and Leo. This DNA test revealed that he faked his death in San Francisco in 1956 and took off to New Jersey, where he met another woman who he never technically married since he had never officially divorced Chiarenza. He also had two other daughters, one of whom was also named Grace.

Blaine had to break the news to his cousins that their dad hadn’t really died all those years ago but was leading a different life.

“We went to San Francisco and told his two daughters, and they weren’t surprised,” Blaine said.

Leo eventually passed away without ever revealing the truth of who he was.

“When Leo died, he was living in Dallas,” Blaine said, “So he had moved a little bit closer, and he got sick and didn’t tell anybody. Then his organs started shutting down, and they told Grace [his daughter], but before she got there, he passed away.”

Blaine believes that Leo had the hospital reach out to her as “maybe a deathbed confession or something,” but Leo died before he could tell anyone.

Infographic by Leena Macklin
The telling of his story was a success as his students ended up producing narratives recounting their childhood memories and the telling of anecdotes from their own relatives.

“I tried my best to make my narrative as interesting as his, but a road trip doesn’t really compare to a real-life mystery,” sophomore Brooklynn Porter said. Porter has since advanced into Christen’s Creative Writing classes and continues to pull inspiration from Blaine’s first-semester story.

“His story has sparked some new ideas,” Porter said. “I personally love writing dramas, so the idea of that is rather fascinating.”