Deadbeat Dad Now Owes Jail Time

A father whose picture was featured on last year’s state Department of Social Services’ “most wanted” poster pleaded guilty Monday to criminal charges of failing to pay more than $60,000 in child support for his two children.

Carey Eugene Trabue, 39, was sentenced by Municipal Judge Richard W. Stanford Jr. to one year and nine months in jail. He also was sentenced to five years of formal probation.

If Trabue violates the conditions of his probation, he faces an additional seven years in jail, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Authorities say Trabue, formerly of Huntington Beach, never made a voluntary child support payment for his children, ages 5 and 11, since so ordered in 1993.

The only payment the children ever received was money withheld from work Trabue performed during his 1994 jail sentence for nonsupport.

“It’s a real tragedy, certainly in a sociological sense, that the natural father of two young children not only does not want to support them but does not even want to attempt to support them,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Sturla.

“It’s a sad commentary when we’ve got to resort to criminal prosecution and incarceration to deal with these problems.”

Last September, Trabue was featured as Orange County’s “most wanted” child support evader on a poster distributed by the state’s Child Support Network.

Trabue was convicted in Orange County in 1994 of willful nonsupport of his children.

He served jail time but fled probation supervision in November 1995.

He was arrested in October in Rapid City, S.D., after he went to an emergency room with a stab wound to the hand, the result of a domestic dispute with his current girlfriend.

It was at that time that authorities discovered he was a fugitive. He was extradited to Orange County in December.