JOSEPH KONDRO WAS BORN MAY 19, 1959, IN MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN, TO A NATIVE American mother from the Chippewa tribe who already had six children and didn’t feel she could care for another. She gave him up at birth and he was adopted by John and Eleanor Kondro, a white couple in Iron River, Michigan, where he grew up, before moving to Castle Rock, Washington. John was an aluminum worker for Reynolds Metals. Kondro later said his parents considered adopting him a mistake.
