Bob Stevenson took on an alias, Shane Ryan. Ryan was his wife’s maiden name, so it was no stretch for Melody to use it again when she drove across the country with Bobby to rejoin her husband and try to stitch the family back together. The newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Ryan told Bobby that going forward his last name was Ryan too, that the other name was never to be mentioned. “They were serious, so I only had to be told once,” Bobby says.

Given the risks he was taking, it was fitting that Shane Ryan supported his family as a professional gambler. He had to beat the odds and live one step ahead of the law every day. Bobby was home-schooled, an only child isolated from other kids except at the arena. Hockey was the only constant from the Ryans’ previous life. Bobby landed in the L.A. Jr. Kings program and thrived there. “The game was always my saving grace,” he says.

But the game also put him in the public eye. People whom the Ryans met through youth hockey had questions about Shane’s background, thought something wasn’t flush about the family’s story. They had their suspicions, thinking that he seemed a lot like a kid from Philly whom they’d seen in national tournaments, though no one pushed it, simply because they wanted to protect Bobby.