A Father’s Deadly Despair

For nearly a decade, Michael P. Generakos had raised his children as a single father, tailoring his life to their needs. But for all his effort to build a stable world for his son and daughter, he seemed to be losing a grip on his own.

By Monday, he apparently felt he had lost everything dear to him, everything he had worked years to protect.

He had changed teaching jobs repeatedly to accommodate his children’s school needs, scrimping by at times. He had battled with school officials and others on behalf of his deaf son, whom he eventually transferred from a Lakewood school to one in Irvine. He rose every weekday at 5:30 a.m. and drove 120 miles a day shuttling his kids around.

“This man basically called himself ‘Mr. Supermom’ and devoted his life to his kids,” said Larry Belkin, director of special education services for the Orange County Department of Education.

And Belkin would know.

For Generakos had waged a lengthy campaign with the department to get the programs he felt his 16-year-old son needed. That battle ended Monday in Costa Mesa with a police sharpshooter’s single bullet to his head, a startling close to a three-hour standoff during which he held two hostages at gunpoint.

Those hostages, both department administrators, told police that Generakos hoped police would shoot him, that he didn’t have the courage to do it himself.

It was just such suicidal gestures that alarmed his former wife to such a degree that she sought to prevent him from being alone with the children, her attorney said Tuesday. His custody was temporarily revoked Sept. 28 by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge.

And so the Lakewood father who would visit his 12-year-old daughter at a neighborhood sleepover for a tuck-in and kiss was reduced to thrice-weekly telephone calls and supervised visitation.

“For the entire month of October and November, he had no contact with his kids. He couldn’t even talk to them by phone. I don’t know why,” recalled next-door neighbor Dave Sherwood.

It was the separation from his kids, said those who knew him, that appeared finally to push the 45-year-old biology teacher over the edge.

“I think he was a very emotionally upset person, and when someone is that emotionally upset, they are capable of anything,” Belkin said.

Generakos’ world changed suddenly in 1989 when his wife, Winifred A. Kordich, left him. Two years later, they divorced, and Generakos was awarded physical custody of the children.

Court records show that the parents agreed to share custody, with the children living full time with their father at the family’s home in Lakewood. They also spent a lot of time with their mother, who lived nearby.

But the arrangement was never without problems, court documents indicate.

About two years ago, Kordich began seeking full custody of the children. Over time, she alleged in her custody request, Generakos continued to brood about the divorce and about “how he can get even with anyone he deems has crossed him.” She contended that his alleged instability was not good for their children.

Most critically, she argued that he was preventing school officials from providing what their 16-year-old son needed.

The boy suffers from Usher’s syndrome, which left him deaf since birth and now is stealing his eyesight. Kordich won a court ruling in 1997 giving her the right to develop their son’s education plan, which the Department of Education also endorsed in its July 1997 statement in the custody case.

A board member said Generakos was preventing his son from learning Braille, which Generakos opposed in favor of medical treatment he believed would restore his son’s vision.

The position of the board, which provides special education programs, served as evidence in Kordich’s fight for custody.

Kordich, who Generakos told the court was a psychologist, could not be reached for comment. Neighbors said she and a friend left their Lakewood home early Tuesday with the children. Generakos had at least three attorneys in the last few years, and none could be reached Tuesday.

David Dunbar, a partner in the Huntington Beach law firm that represents Kordich, said Generakos’ behavior had deteriorated over the last two years.

“He was obviously very upset over custody issues and the divorce,” said Dunbar. “He made a number of comments over the course of time indicating he might be contemplating suicide.”

Dunbar said it was for that reason that supervised visitation with the children was required by the court.

“He would say things like, ‘I’m moving to San Francisco because there aren’t bridges high enough in L.A.’ ” Dunbar said.

On the tidy mature Lakewood street where Michael P. Generakos grew up, neighbors viewed him as a likable man. He had lived in the area for most of his life, they said.

In 1972, Generakos graduated from the Catholic St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower, where his former baseball coach, Ray Rodriguez, said he “was like one of those kids who was always your favorite. He hustled, he worked hard, did everything you asked.”

He graduated from Cal State Long Beach with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in microbiology.

For seven years, according to a resume at Coast Community College District, he was an administrator at Microbiology Reference Lab in Cypress, quitting in 1989. He worked about two years at one job, two more at another.

He taught at Irvine High School for the 1994-95 school year, and spent the summer teaching microbiology at Long Beach City College. His neighbors said Generakos moved between jobs as his children’s schedules dictated.

“It was hard for him to keep stable work and also be there to pick up his kids and do what he thought he needed to do,” said Dave Sherwood.

While school board officials recognized Generakos as a devoted father, they had grown wary of his increasingly aggressive tone.

For six months, officials said, Generakos appeared at every county school board meeting and berated them for, among other things, insisting his son learn Braille. He also was calling administrators several times daily.

At one point, he burst into an administrator’s office. Security was tightened at the education department’s Costa Mesa headquarters and at University High School in Irvine, where his son attended. In anticipation of Generakos’ appearances during the public comment portion of the proceedings, police were stationed in the chambers.

“We did not get a restraining order,” said Belkin, the department of education’s special education director, “because we were trying to mediate things with him.”

On Oct. 20, though, Kordich sought a restraining order requesting that Generakos stay 250 yards away from her. Yet she also asked that the court eventually consider granting him unmonitored visits. A hearing was scheduled for Dec. 8 in Superior Court in Norwalk.

Friends of the family and of Generakos said losing custody was the final blow.

His next-door neighbor, Bridget Sherwood, said Generakos said the custody decision would never be reversed because he lacked the financial means to keep fighting his former wife in court.

“He had those kids for 10 years and then suddenly he didn’t have them,” she said. “The kids were his life.”

Generakos’ daughter had repeatedly asked to come home to live with her father, said Sherwood, whose daughter is the little girl’s best friend.

“He just didn’t feel he could do anything about it,” Bridget Sherwood said. She last spoke to him about 10 days ago and said he seemed normal and pleasant. Monday night’s event came as a shock.

“That was not the man I knew,” she said. “But don’t we all hide that other side?”

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Times correspondent Jack Leonard in Long Beach contributed to this report.