Jardine: Behind door, the mother supervisor never knew

Jim DeMartini generally introduces himself with ease.

"I'm a person who is used to knocking on doors," the Stanislaus County supervisor said. "I knocked on 6,000 of them when I ran for office."

However, the door he approached in a central Stockton neighborhood in April was in another county and well outside his West Side district. It also was a bit out of his comfort zone.

"I was a little nervous," he admits.

Why? Because the woman DeMartini went to see that day gave him up for adoption more than five decades ago. So there he stood on her doorstep, about to meet his birth mother and speak to her for the first time.

He knocked. After what seemed like an eternity, she opened the door.

"I said, 'I'm Jim DeMartini. I was born Aug. 11, 1953, and I believe you are my mother,' " DeMartini told her.

After a moment of silence, she spoke.

"What was your birthday again?" she asked. When he repeated the date, she invited him into her home for a mother and child reunion. Except the child is 56, a successful farmer and politician. The mother, Charlotte Bogue, just turned 81.

They've been catching up ever since, talking by phone a couple of times each week. He drove to Stockton to visit with her Friday morning, as he has done several times since they reunited.

"It's been a nice thing," he said.

Here's the back story, as DeMartini explained it:

In the early 1950s, Bogue was married to a man named Alfred Brocchini. They lived in Stockton. They separated for a time, during which she became pregnant by another man, DeMartini said. She and Brocchini reunited, and she decided that when the baby was born, she'd put it up for adoption. She went to the old Modesto City Hospital on H Street and had a baby boy Aug. 11, 1953 -- DeMartini's date of birth.

Soon after, Chester and Lucy DeMartini adopted him.

They raised him on their farm near Empire, one of several places they owned and farmed over the years.

"I was an only child," Jim DeMartini said. "They couldn't have children. It just happened that I went to a nice family of farmers. I worked on the farm with my father. I had all nice memories. They took good care of me."

Lucy DeMartini died in 1976, and Chester nine years later. DeMartini made farming his career, but didn't keep his parents' numerous properties.

"Trying to farm all of those little places and moving farm equipment from place to place wasn't real efficient," he said.

He eventually sold the smaller parcels and bought 1,200 acres that he farms today on the West Side.

Following the conservative principles instilled in him by his adoptive parents, DeMartini became active politically and rose to chairman of the county's Central Republican Committee. In 2004, he challenged and beat longtime incumbent Paul Caruso for the District 5 supervisorial seat, in no small part because he outhustled Caruso in walking the precincts. He was re-elected in 2008.

As a supervisor, DeMartini said he routinely visits county agencies to learn how they operate and to understand their needs. In a roundabout way, one such visit started DeMartini's process of finding his birth mom.

"I always wondered about her," he said. "But I never worried about (being adopted)."

While at the Community Services Agency in January, he asked adoption services staff how he could find information regarding his adoption.

They weren't certain if his file still existed, he said. Some files were lost or misplaced when the agency moved to the Hackett Road center more than a decade ago. But a day or so later, the agency turned over a report that includes the basics of DeMartini's case: the date and place of his birth and some other facts, but no names.