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Federal Defenders Meet at Work, Then Discover They’re Sisters

On the perpetually unsettled issue of nature versus nurture, two Omaha-based federal defenders come down squarely on the side of nature.  How else to explain the remarkable fact that Julie Hansen and Kelly Mahoney Steenbock led parallel lives, never knowing each other, and then met by chance in their 40s while on the job as public defenders for the U.S. District Court in Nebraska, only to discover they are sisters.

On a Friday afternoon in March 2015, the two women were discussing weekend plans with a small group of defender colleagues and discussing Steenbock’s background. She was new to the operation, and everyone, especially Hansen, wanted to know more about her.  Before long, a few random tidbits of information – an aunt named Terry, a grandmother with a yarn shop, and an absentee father with a drinking problem and the surname Mahoney – led the two to the out-of-nowhere realization they are half-sisters who share the same father. Hugs and tears ensued, and life for the two attorneys-colleagues-sisters has been very different since.

“It’s definitely a one in a million shot that it happened this way,” Steenbock said.

Both women were raised in Bellevue, population 50,000, on the eastern edge of Nebraska. They were five years apart in age, and although both visited their paternal grandmother’s yarn shop at varying times in their lives, and had the same pediatrician, they went to different high schools and never knew of each other’s existence.

Hansen’s mother was 16 when she gave birth to Julie in 1968. Her mother dropped out of high school, and her teenage father and his family didn’t acknowledge the child’s existence. Hansen grew up in her maternal grandmother’s household, with her mother working as a beautician and her mother’s siblings pitching in to raise her. “I was a latchkey kid,” Hansen says, “Everybody at home had to work. And I found solace in school. At school, I got immediate rewards and teachers praised me. I found an environment that nurtured something that was not present in the home, because everybody worked.”

Academically, she excelled, reading every book she got her hands on and rarely missing school. Her maternal grandmother sometimes took her to the yarn shop in defiance of the proprietor who refused to recognize their smart, clever granddaughter. Her grandmother also told the young girl that her love of books reminded her of her father’s sister, Terry, who sometimes visited Julie as a baby.

When Hansen graduated with honors, she serendipitously found out where her father lived – the only picture she had of him was from his high school yearbook – and sent him some photos and her graduation announcement. She got no response.

There was no money for college, but Hansen was determined. In her hometown, “you’re either going into the military, you’re going to college or you’re going nowhere,” she said.  Inspired by a high school government course on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Hansen saved money from her job at a Wendy’s restaurant, applied for academic scholarships, took out student loans, and eventually made it all the way through law school, landing a job a few years later in the Lancaster County public defender’s office    

“The people they were serving were like the people I grew up around. These were people I could understand and talk to.” Hansen said. “The public defenders themselves were brash and funny, with tough outer exteriors but gentle souls. I realized these were my people. ”

Steenbock also found her calling in public defender work, taking a remarkably similar hardscrabble route. She was born in 1973, five years after Hansen. Her mother was married to Robert Mahoney, Hansen’s father, who by then was a long-distance truck driver. On the rare times he was around, he was witty and fun to be with, Steenbock recalled.  “He was a very big personality, people liked being around him, with a great sense of humor and a quick wit. He was a terrible father, but a very likeable person,” she said.

Her father was a heavy drinker, and her parents eventually split up. Her mother took classes to become a secretary to support Steenbock and her younger sister. Like Hansen, Steenbock did well in school, determined to have a different sort of future than the people all around her.

“The stress of being poor is unbelievable, and I didn’t want to lead that life, always asking how much does this cost and do we have enough to make it to next week,” she said.  Steenbock was also inspired by her study of constitutional law, and saw connections to her early experiences. “I observed that people who are poor were not treated fairly by people in power. I saw the law as the way to be the person who fights for people who don’t have a voice,” she said.

Like Hansen, she put herself through college and law school, getting her J.D. from Creighton University in Omaha. During a summer job working for the state Democratic Party, she met Tom Riley, then running for Douglas County public defender. When she complained about classes that seemed aimed at “litigating about people’s money, which didn’t interest me a bit,” Riley told her, “Come work for me when the election is over and I will show you what it’s like to be a lawyer that means something.”

Steenbock became a public defender in Douglas County, where Omaha is located, less than an hour’s drive from where Hansen worked as a defender in the Lincoln metropolitan area. Both were outstanding public defenders who were becoming known in Nebraska legal circles for winning difficult cases.  And both sought out the challenging, high profile work that the federal defender’s office offered in Omaha. Opportunities in the office are infrequent – there are just eight full-time lawyers – yet both were hired, Hansen in September 2005 and Steenbock in February 2015.

Since the day they discovered their shared family tree, the women have spent a lot of time getting to know each other and each other’s families – both are married and have kids. They have marveled at the very similar forces that propelled them forward in life. “Part of it is having the intestinal fortitude to be strong in an environment that we both were not cultivated for – college,” Hansen said. “Neither one of us was satisfied with our life. We were restless in Bellevue, where we were looking, at best, at a lifetime of mediocrity.”

Hansen and Steenbock are working to find peace with the father who left them as children and who died from organ failure related to alcohol abuse in 2007.  Whatever his shortcomings, they see some of his traits – his quick wit, sociability and intelligence – in each other. “He did give us each other, and probably our professional lives, that restlessness you have to have to keep searching for answers in the law,” Hansen says. “We have him to thank for that.”

Related Topics: Defender Services