Dawson handles life’s biggest mogul

SAUZE d’OULX, Italy – Sometimes the most memorable moment in an Olympic journey isn’t stepping onto a podium, but reflecting on how you got there.

Toby Dawson’s story begins in a police station on the streets of Pusan, South Korea, in 1978. He had been abandoned at the front door as a baby. He has no name, no papers, nothing linking him to another human being.

He is given a birthday of November 30, 1978 – the date he was brought to an orphanage. Officials assume he is 2 years old based on how he looks compared to other children. They call him Soo Chul.

A black-and-white photo of this sad little boy would reach Vail, Colo., giving him an improbable ticket out.

Deborah Dawson thought about her adoptive child’s journey as she walked into the freestyle skiing venue Wednesday afternoon.

“This has been Toby’s dream for so many years,” she said. “Can you believe it? Here we are. I am so incredibly proud.”

Hours later, there would be greater joy.

Dawson, now 27, would win the only medal for the U.S. team that included Jeremy Bloom, a young man soon bound for the NFL Combine and the focus of much pre-Olympic hype. Dawson finished third, behind mysterious Internet mogul Dale Begg-Smith of Australia and Finland’s Mikko Ronkainen.

Bloom, whose record six consecutive World Cup victories made him a gold-medal favorite, faded in the finals and finished sixth.

While Bloom went bust, Dawson savors a moment etched in the pain of a small boy so traumatized by abandonment that – for nearly a year – he would scream when Dawson would try tucking him in at night.

His wails were in Korean. Umma, umma. Korean for Mommy.

Then married, Debbie and her husband Mike – both ski instructors in Vail – had adopted Toby when he was 31/2. With Deborah unable to get pregnant, the Dawsons chose to adopt. She desperately wanted a girl and was startled when an adoption agency in Denver told them a baby boy was available.

She struggled with the choice after driving two hours to get to the office, not wanting to see a black and white picture of the child from the agency. She left the office and had a chat with her sister Maggie, who convinced her to take the child. They went to the store and bought an outfit for a boy his age.

“He was probably the unluckiest child who ever lived, given how he started,” Maggie Young said after Wednesday’s event. “We have no idea what happened to him the first 21/2 years of his life.”

Reclusive as a child, Toby finally found a niche in athletics, first in skiing and finally in a freestyle world that knew no limitations for his boundless energy on the slopes.

“Mom it’s boring,” he would say of the ski program. “You have to turn where they tell you to turn.”

At 14, Toby joined a three-day freestyle ski camp dedicated mornings to turns and jumps, and afternoons to trampoline work. Excelling from the first day, Toby finally began coming out of the protective cocoon he had created for himself.

Although the screaming had stopped as a child, Toby remained quiet, introverted and non-confrontational. He would use his brother, K.C., as a buffer with strangers. K.C. would be the one to ask for directions, or initiate conversation with people who were outside Toby’s comfort level.

“We had different experiences in the whole adoption thing,” K.C. Dawson said. “I was put into an orphanage and he was left on the streets so what he went through was something that stayed with him.”

It has remained tucked away quietly, though in recent years he has tried to embrace his Korean heritage.

He has participated in Korean culture camps for adoptive children – an experience he used to loathe – and has been particularly helpful to kids who have faced similar issues of adjustment.

He wants to find his birth parents, despite three different instances where a family claimed Toby as theirs, only to refuse DNA tests.

He didn’t want to expend too much energy on this while preparing for the Olympics.

But now, after the smiles and the champagne toasts finally fade, Toby is ready for another step in this improbable journey – a process that will bring closure, among other things.

“I want to see where I got my good looks from,” he said before stepping away from the press conference.

He then cut through a group of reporters to hug the woman who once silenced the screams of a lost child, before showing him a world of boundless opportunity.

The police station in Korea is no where in sight.