It only takes one look to spot their likeness.

It’s there in the eyes.

Blue.

But the kind that can look green at certain times, the father and son say almost simultaneously.

Blue is also both their favorite color.

They only recently discovered that mutual personality trait. It hasn’t been a year since they learned of their relationship.

A present given to Dwight Manley for Christmas 2017 unlocked the secret to his birth father.

Now, they both get to celebrate Manley’s 53rd birthday this year.

The connection between the two pairs of blue eyes is one story among thousands generated in an age of affordable genetic testing and deep-rooted genealogy websites, unknown origins resolved with a saliva sample and a DNA kit dropped in the mail.

The discovery likely would be of little interest outside of family and friends. Except for who they are.

The son: a rare coin expert and successful sports agent who represented basketball bad boy Dennis Rodman in his multi-million dollar heyday with the NBA champion Chicago Bulls and other big-name players.

And the father? One of the most well-known elected officials in Los Angeles history: Michael D. Antonovich.

Mike Antonovich, left, with his son, Dwight Manley in Manley’s Brea, CA home on Monday, Jan 28, 2019. Manley discovered Antonovich was his father after doing a Ancestry.com DNA kit in 2017. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Dwight Manley shows the Ancestry.com DNA notice that told him politician Mike Antonovich is his father in Manley’s Brea, CA home on Monday, Jan 28, 2019. Manley discovered Antonovich was his father after doing a Ancestry.com DNA kit in 2017. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Dwight Manley, center, celebrates his 53rd birthday with his two dads – his birth father, Mike Antonovich, at left, and his adoptive father, Robert Manley, at right. (Courtesy of Dwight Manley)

Mike Antonovich, left, shares a laugh with his son, Dwight Manley in Manley’s Brea, CA home on Monday, Jan 28, 2019. Manley discovered Antonovich was his father after doing a Ancestry.com DNA kit in 2017. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Mike Antonovich, left, shares a laugh with his son, Dwight Manley in Manley’s Brea, CA home on Monday, Jan 28, 2019. Manley discovered Antonovich was his father after doing a Ancestry.com DNA kit in 2017. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)



Dwight Manley used an Ancestry.com DNA kit to find out Mike Antonovich is his father in Manley’s Brea, CA home on Monday, Jan 28, 2019. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Mike Antonovich, left, listens as his son, Dwight Manley, talks about using an Ancestry.com DNA kit to find out that Antonovich is his father in Manley’s Brea, CA home on Monday, Jan 28, 2019. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Mike Antonovich, left, listens as his son, Dwight Manley, talks about using an Ancestry.com DNA kit to find out that Antonovich is his father in Manley’s Brea, CA home on Monday, Jan 28, 2019. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Mike Antonovich, left, with his son, Dwight Manley in Manley’s Brea, CA home on Monday, Jan 28, 2019. Manley discovered Antonovich was his father after doing a Ancestry.com DNA kit in 2017. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A plaque was installed for former LA County Supervisor, Michael D. Antonovich, shown here in May 2018 when officials and community stakeholders dedicated the Burbank Airport-North Metrolink Station. Antonovich is one of the region’s most well-known politicians. (Photo by Gene Blevins, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)



‘You can’t make this up’

Manley recognized the name instantly when he saw “mantonovich_1” pop up as a parent/child connection on Ancestry.com.

So would anyone familiar with state and local politics over the past five decades.

The former Los Angeles County supervisor, whose civic engagement continues in retirement, earned the moniker “mayor of Los Angeles County” for his 34-year tenure representing the sprawling 5th District from 1980 to 2012 and 2014 to 2016.

Antonovich also served three terms as a state assemblyman in the 1970s. He chaired the California Republican Party for a couple of years in the mid-1980s and has held positions on numerous government agencies.

His public service includes being named to presidential committees, along with failed bids for lieutenant governor and the U.S. Senate.

A hiking trail near San Dimas and a regional park in the Santa Susana Mountains bear his name. So does Michael D. Antonovich Jr.

Antonovich, 79, married late in life and has two young-adult children with his wife of 21 years, Chinese actress Christine Hu Huiling.

He had no clue until March 2018 about Manley – conceived, it turns out, during Antonovich’s grad student days at Cal State Los Angeles.

Antonovich learned that he had fathered Manley when he got a call from a close friend in the world of politics, Republican strategist Jon Fleischman, who had agreed to break the news.

Manley felt awkward about doing it himself, along with the possibility of facing rejection.

“I didn’t want that, but I was prepared for that,” he says.

Looking for a go-between, Manley contacted a mutual acquaintance, Susan Kang Schroeder, the former Orange County District Attorney chief of staff. She got in touch with Fleischman.

The revelation that introduced father to son began with a cliche straight out of a Hollywood movie, recalls Fleischman, a former executive director of the California Republican Party who had been mentored in politics by Antonovich.

“Are you alone?” Fleischman asked. “Are you sitting down?”

Fleischman describes the story that unfolded afterward as one that has generated its own positive spin.

“It’s turned out to be a really tremendous blessing. Both of them are happy about the circumstance.”

But, Fleischman also remembered thinking as he rang Antonovich’s number, “You can’t make this up.”

Pregnant and unmarried

Her doctor in Whittier arranged the private adoption. That was a common practice of the time.

Back in 1965, abortion wasn’t legal. She would have had to travel to Mexico for the procedure, or seek out a more dangerous alternative.

But she is not offering any insight.

The woman who gave birth to Manley declined, through her lawyer, to be interviewed for this story. Her name is not being published because of her desire for privacy.

This much is known: At 18 and a college freshman attending what was then called California State College at Los Angeles, she chose not to raise her son.

Baby Davis, as the court record designated Manley, was born Feb. 23, 1966. Days later, a couple who shared the same obstetrician as his birth mother legally adopted him.

Robert and Sharon Manley wanted a child but could not conceive. They named their son Dwight.

Dwight Manley, raised mostly in Brea, became the couple’s only child. They divorced when he was still young. Both would remarry, adding step-parents to Manley’s manufactured family tree. His adoptive mother died four years ago; his adoptive father lives in Valencia.

“We did not meet the birth mother or father or anything,” says Robert Manley, now 76. “We did not know who they were. It was a win-win for all concerned.

“We were able to adopt Dwight and that was with the wishes of the birth mother.”

Manley says his birth mother never held him – he was whisked away that quickly.

He learned this detail from her, he says, after tracking her down in 1993 through a private detective he hired to search for his birth parents.

The man she identified as Manley’s father was a high school classmate she saw as a college coed when he came home on leave from the Air Force. Antonovich’s name never came up until Manley got the results of the DNA kit.

Manley learned later, by her admission, that she had been involved with three different men at the time he was conceived.

He would come to believe that she lied about his paternity, something she denied. They broke off communication following heated email exchanges when Manley learned Antonovich was his father.

Antonovich, during a recent interview where he sat comfortably beside his son on a couch at Manley’s spacious home in the hills of Brea, claims not to remember much about the birth mother.

He did recognize her face in a high school photo Manley showed him. Mother and son also bear a striking resemblance.

But whatever the nature of their liaison, Antonovich provided no details except to say, “I had no recollection of a girl being pregnant.”

Antonovich was 26 at the time, president of his graduate class and a leader of the Sigma Nu fraternity on campus. He says he had a lot of girlfriends in college.

He was pursuing a master’s degree in health science, with an eye toward becoming an educator like Sara Schafer, the woman who remained a mentor into her 90s, from the time she was his fifth-grade teacher in South Los Angeles to her death.

A lifelong conservative, Antonovich also served as president of the Young Republicans during his graduate years and was an Associated Student Body representative. His decades in elective office launched in 1969 with a seat on the inaugural Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees, along with another young politician who later became a four-term governor of California, Jerry Brown.

Brown, it would turn out, was among the first to learn that Antonovich was Manley’s father.

Manley, who has known Brown since his days as state attorney general, says he texted the then-governor the day he first met his dad in person. The two politicians exchanged some words.

“‘Governor, you’ve known my son longer than I have,’” Manley recalls his dad saying.

“And Brown said, ‘What the heck is going on here?’”

Twists and turns

Manley learned he was adopted when he was about 8, after a cousin called him the black sheep of the family.

Robert Manley says he neither encouraged or discouraged Manley from finding his birth parents.

“As a young man, he decided he wanted to inquire as to who his birth parents were. He took it upon himself to do that search.”

Manley had skipped college, achieving success through his self-taught knowledge of numismatics. By his early 20s, his drive had made him a nationally known collector who dealt with rare coins worth millions.

Then he became business manager and agent for Rodman, nicknamed The Worm by his mother because he wiggled while playing pinball. A 1997 Sports Illustrated story called Manley “The Man Who Turned The Worm” for his ability to guide the controversial athlete into lucrative deals on and off the court.

But Manley’s success could not quell his deep questions about himself.

He says he “craved” the answers to fill a big void in his life.

Who was he? Who were his people?

“I felt incomplete.”

He sought help from the Adoptees’ Liberty Movement Association, or ALMA, a nonprofit that maintains a registry to assist in searches like Manley’s. But it took a private eye to locate his birth mother.

When he first met her – for lunch at Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach – Manley felt an instant connection as they hugged.

Later, when he met the man that he says she identified as his birth father – the private eye tracked him down in Westminster – Manley did not feel that same inexplicable bond. And he looked nothing like the man.

Manley was blue-eyed and stood 6-foot-3. This man had brown eyes, like his birth mother, and was under 6 feet tall.

Still, when Manley showed up in 1994 at his alleged father’s little house in Westminster, “He started crying. He was so happy.”

Manley would see the man he thought was his dad only a half-dozen times, including a hockey game they attended together.

“It answered a question but we didn’t have anything in common.”

With Antonovich, it’s been different, Manley says.

“There’s like a sixth sense thing that happens.”

Connecting with Antonovich

Dwight Manley and Christine James have been friends since attending Brea Olinda High. It was James who gave him the gift membership to Ancestry.com.

“It’s one of those things I always struggle with,” James explains. “What to get Dwight for his birthday and Christmas?”

It took Manley several weeks before he sent in the kit, figuring he already knew the identity of his birth father.

Once contacted by Fleischman, Antonovich responded swiftly.

Beyond the DNA evidence, the circumstances and dates that Fleischman outlined regarding Manley’s birth lined up.

Fleischman had Googled information about Manley that he sent to Antonovich. His son’s achievements impressed him.

Still, he had lots of questions that Fleischman could not answer: Does he look like me? What’s he really like? Is he a nice person?

Antonovich told his wife Christine right away. She gave open-hearted encouragement.

“I said thank God he’s not a hobo and she said, well, we’d have to love him just the same,” Antonovich recalls.

His son and daughter were excited by the news as well. They are close in age to Manley’s son and daughter. The four of them range from 18 to 21 years old.

There have been family get-togethers at Antonovich’s home in Glendale and Manley’s in Brea.

Their sons think Antonovich, who jokes that he used to be 6-foot-3, and Manley are clones of each other.

Manley, who is investing his time and energy these days in Brea’s development, figures he gets his civic involvement from his dad, whom he proudly introduced at a city council meeting in October. Antonovich, who had served as a reserve police officer in Los Angeles, watched as Manley donated a new vehicle to the local police explorer program.

Antonovich at one point also collected coins. Both are over-achievers. Neither drinks much.

These similarities they are discovering gradually. But the first time the two men met in person, a year ago March 9, for lunch at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, they could easily see the evidence of their biological connection.

Manley’s gaze lingered in the same place as Antonovich: “I couldn’t stop looking at his eyes. It was like I saw my own eyes.”