The story of Edward Dowd, and how a DNA test threatened his burgeoning foundation.

Like many 74-year-olds, Palma School’s gymnasium needed a facelift.

That’s how the school’s President Chris Dalman opened his remarks to a crowd of staff, students and alumni outside the entrance to the school’s 1951 gym on the overcast morning of Thursday, May 1.

The smell of fresh tar and paint was still in the air inside and outside of the gym, which recently underwent a major renovation. As speakers lined up to the podium, the school’s bell went off at regular intervals, with crowds of students – both boys and girls – scurrying to their next classes.

And therein lies one of the main reasons for the renovation: In 2024, Palma became a co-ed institution for the first time since 1964.

“This past year has brought remarkable change to our campus, breathing new life into the halls of Palma,” Dalman said. “Our vision for this gym is two-fold: With the transition to a co-ed school, we need the best facilities for both our young men and women.”

The renovation included new locker rooms, restrooms and offices, as well as a large foyer, where Palma’s many championship trophies and plaques are displayed, along with televisions showcasing highlights of the school’s athletes over the years.

But there was another reason for the May 1 ceremony, a name that is displayed throughout the building, and takes center stage in the foyer, where a large plaque outlines this person’s achievements: Edward Dowd.

Dowd, a 1963 Palma graduate, died in 2022 at the age of 76 after a 29-year battle with multiple sclerosis.

Before he died, Dowd, who led a successful career in real estate, founded the Edward M. Dowd Foundation, with the purpose of benefiting organizations in Salinas and Santa Clara. Dalman said Dowd had supported Palma throughout the years with student scholarships and other projects.

The idea of renovating the gym was floating around in conversations between Dowd and Dalman, but Dowd died before the plans came to fruition. The foundation’s directors took up the mantle, and in early 2024, after numerous meetings to go over schematics and legal work, donated the largest amount of money from a single donor in the school’s history: $2.5 million.

Since its founding, the Edward M. Dowd Foundation has worked to provide grants to organizations focused on education, the arts and history, in both Salinas and Santa Clara, two cities that held a special meaning for Dowd. But a DNA test that led to a court case in San Francisco threatened to uproot the burgeoning foundation’s plans, just as it was getting started.

DOWD WAS BORN ON SEPT. 13, 1945 IN SAN FRANCISCO. The family, with their three sons, moved to Salinas in 1952, where Dowd attended Sacred Heart Elementary and Palma High School.

His brother Jim Dowd said Edward’s time at Palma was bittersweet.

“The sweet part was he loved sports, football, basketball and track,” Jim told the crowd gathered at the gym on May 1. “The bitter part was, he personally didn’t like studying that much to begin with.”

Dowd wasn’t a fan of how the school disciplined its students, which apparently happened frequently to him. Jim said his brother had two priorities at Palma: sports, and driving through Main Street in a candy-red ’56 Chevrolet, staring down students from Salinas High School. That resulted in a “dust-up behind Fosters” every once in a while, Jim said.

But Dowd did graduate (“Our parents had their fingers crossed up to the last minute,” Jim said), and decided to join the U.S. Air Force. After four years in the service, he came back to Salinas a changed young man. Jim said Dowd learned the value of discipline and having respect for others, and told his brother that he didn’t want to fall back on the bad habits of his high school years.

He ended up graduating with a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Santa Clara University, and then embarked on his real estate career with Marcus & Millichap, before forming his own investment company, EMD Properties Inc., in 1981, as well as financial institutions in San Jose and Sacramento.

In 1993 at the age of 47, Dowd was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which, while it may have forced him to slow down in business, allowed him to focus on philanthropy, Jim said. Over the years, Dowd funded various projects, including the art history building at Santa Clara University, the entry pavilion at Palo Alto University’s Mountain View campus, and a refurbishment of the mental health unit building and courtyard at Natividad in Salinas, made in honor of his mother Nora who was a longtime nurse there.

He also established the Edward M. Dowd Advocacy Program with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which provides support to people living with the disease, such as helping to fund retrofits to their homes and providing caregiving and other services.

Dowd died at his home in San Francisco on Feb. 27, 2022. In his obituary, his brothers, life companion, nieces, nephews, and great-nieces and -nephews are listed as his survivors. He had no children – at least none that he reportedly knew of at the time of his passing.

In August 2022, Andrew Koch spit into a tube provided to him by Ancestry.com.

Billed as the world’s largest genealogy website, Ancestry provides a DNA kit for purchase, where those interested in learning their family tree can submit a saliva sample to the company, which then enters the DNA into its massive database to find a match.

As part of its process, Ancestry tests for the genetic units of centimorgans, which measure the probability that two people are related. Generally, the more centimorgans two people share, the closer they are related, according to Ancestry.

A couple of months later, Ancestry notified Koch that he shared 3,484 centimorgans with Ed Dowd (as his name was listed in the database), according to a copy of the letter filed in San Francisco County Superior Court. As a result, there is a “100 percent” chance that Dowd is his father, the letter stated.

On March 17, 2023, Koch, through his San Jose-based attorneys, filed a case in San Francisco County Superior Court, seeking “all of the assets” from Dowd’s trust. The exact number is not known – Koch could not be reached for this article, and his attorneys did not respond to multiple requests for comment – but according to Dowd’s 1997 trust, included in the court documents, at least $8 million was meant to be distributed among family and friends at the time of his death. After the distributions were made, the balance of the estate would go to the Edward M. Dowd Foundation.

During this time, the foundation was ramping up its operations. According to financial documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service, it had begun making donations to various organizations over the past couple of years, including the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Food Bank for Monterey County, Meals on Wheels of the Salinas Valley and others. For its first paid employee, the foundation hired Susie Brusa in early 2023 as its executive director. She left a role as U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta’s district director, but her stint was short-lived as the court case came to light. (Brusa declined to comment for this article.)

In a court filing, Koch’s attorneys point to a section of the state probate code that refers to children omitted from a will. Citing the 2020 court case Rallo v. O’Brian, the filing contends that the “statute carves out a distribution right for unknown children only if they can prove the only reason the decedent did not provide for them was because the decedent did not know they existed.”

“Here, at the time of his death. Decedent [Dowd] was unaware that Petitioner [Koch] was his son,” the filing reads. “Decedent stated that he ‘has no children, living or deceased.’ Clearly, as stated by Decedent in his own Trust, he was unaware that Petitioner was his son and did not know that he had any children.

“Moreover, if Decedent was aware of Petitioner’s existence, he would have provided for Petitioner in the Trust.”

Dowd was aware of Koch’s existence – just not his relationship to him.

According to the court documents, Dowd and Koch’s mother, Joan Bell, were in a “long-term romantic relationship,” who dated “off and on,” beginning in 1987.

“Decedent knew that the Petitioner was Ms. Bell’s son, but had no idea that he was also Petitioner’s father,” the filing states.

Koch was born on May 2, 1991 at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz. He lived in Livermore at the time of the 2023 court filing.

Dowd and Bell considered marrying, but when he was asked to disclose his financial assets in a prenuptial agreement, he backed away and never married anyone, according to court documents.

“Decedent was extremely secretive and private about his financial affairs and did not feel comfortable in disclosing his assets as part of a prenuptial agreement,” the filing states.

Without naming names, Dowd’s brother Jim noted during the May 1 ceremony at Palma School that one time when Edward was dating a woman, he told his mother he was going to Carmel to buy a diamond for the woman, much to the excitement of their mother. Jim, who witnessed the conversation, said he took his brother to another room to have a conversation with him.

“I told him, ‘what the hell are you doing?’” Jim recalled. “‘You just can’t do that to mother.’ He said, ‘Ah, don’t worry about it. Not a big deal.’

“That’s the way he looked at dates and women. He showed me one time a marriage contract his lawyer wrote up for him, and I told him there’s no way in heck anyone is going to sign that. He just laughed and said, ‘That’s why I got it.’”

Jim, who now lives in Virginia, said people always asked him why Edward never got married: “I tried to explain it to them: He was too busy, and second, he didn’t care.”

In a statement to the court, Bell wrote that Dowd told her he believed he couldn’t have children – he “had been with many women during his lifetime and had never gotten anyone pregnant.”

Still, Dowd reportedly treated Koch well, as according to Bell, “he would often visit and had a special place in his heart for Andrew.” He apparently offered to buy a home for the mother and son, and “Edward even hung a photo on his fridge of me and Andrew for several months,” Bell wrote in court papers.

It’s statements like these that lead Koch to believe that Dowd would have included him in his will had he known he was his father, noting that Dowd was very generous with his money and toward others.

Koch’s filing states that because Dowd was listed in the Ancestry database, he believes Dowd was looking for heirs to pass on his wealth.

“Through these gifts and his nonprofit giving Decedent was trying to continue his legacy with the assets that he had accumulated during his life because he was unaware that he had any persons to continue that legacy,” the claim states. “If he had known that Petitioner was his son, Decedent would have seen that as an opportunity to continue his legacy and would have provided for Petitioner.”

THROUGH A FILING BY DOWD’S TRUST’S SAN FRANCISCO-BASED ATTORNEYS, Hanson Bridgett LLP, the trustees agreed on a handful of facts listed in Koch’s petition, namely that Dowd was generous with his wealth, had submitted his DNA to Ancestry and Koch was not listed in the will.

The case slogged through the court system for more than two years, as the parties underwent written discovery and depositions.

On March 26, the judge directed the parties to meet to determine the next steps before a possible trial. They reached a settlement agreement and on April 21, John F. Doyle, Koch’s attorney, filed for the case to be dismissed, “with prejudice” – meaning that he agrees not to file a future suit.

“The claims in the lawsuit were vigorously denied, and ultimately the lawsuit was dismissed,” says Daniel I. Spector, who served as the lead trust and estate litigator representing the co-trustees of the Edward M. Dowd Trust.

Spector says the terms of the settlement are not being disclosed – but what led to it depends on the perspective of the parties, he adds.

“After more than two years of litigation, my clients and I concluded Mr. Koch could not prevail on his claim under the Probate Code,” Spector says. “However, the cost of litigating and appealing Mr. Koch’s claim would be substantial and the delay in funding the Dowd Foundation for the benefit of various Bay Area nonprofits would be long. Thus, my clients made a rational business decision to purchase an end of the dispute through a dismissal based on the continuing cost of defending against Mr. Koch’s claim.”

The parties were due to next appear in court on June 2, but since the settlement is not subject to the court’s approval, the hearing is canceled.

THE EDWARD M. DOWD FOUNDATION IS “ALIVE AND WELL,” says Jim Dowd, who serves as the foundation’s president and chair of the board.

Grant applications are accepted twice a year, with the next round of applications due Sept. 15. Applicants must be a tax-exempt public charity or be financially sponsored by one.

Also, they must support projects that benefit Salinas or Santa Clara University. More specifically, the foundation’s areas of focus are arts and education, health and human service, and veterans.

Jim Dowd says it was important to his brother that the foundation give back specifically to Salinas and Santa Clara, as both cities were where he grew up and was educated. Since its inception, the foundation has handed out grants that average $50,000.

It follows Dowd’s philanthropic philosophy of giving back to places and organizations where he had a personal connection.

In 2016, Dowd donated $3 million to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, at that time the largest donation the organization received from a single donor.

In an announcement marking the gift, Dowd said his MS diagnosis was “one of the best things that ever happened” to him, because it allowed him to focus on philanthropy.

“I realize the value of services for people with limitations. I have help navigating life with MS, but I often wonder how people without sufficient resources manage even the day-to-day tasks,” he said in 2016. “My overall focus is to help improve the quality of life for people with MS who do not have the financial means to get the support they need.”