ELIZABETH MEDINA

elizabeth medina never knew anything about her father. So when her mother died a decade ago, Medina felt like an orphan.

But a year ago, she found a note at her door from lawyers telling her that her father was alive, incarcerated, and trying to reach her. “When the lawyers told me this was real, it wasn’t bullshit, I broke down. I was crying,” says Medina, 48. She was a bit shy the first time she met her father, who has been in prison practically her whole life. He did most of the talking. He gave her some of the toys and drawings he’d been making her for years. Fearful of using shared telephones during the pandemic, he emails her every single day. “Obviously, we’re bonded now,” she says. But she worries. People in his cellblock have gotten ill. “If he gets really sick, you can’t visit him in the hospital,” she says.