By GREG HARDESTY

The Orange County (Calif.) Register

COSTA MESA, Calif. Jennifer Young digs into a late breakfast of chicken enchiladas, her son, Cole, 8, by her side.

She urges him to eat his chocolate pancakes and apple sauce.

The two are used to sharing meals č just them, with no father or husband.

Young’s seemingly storybook relationship with Cole’s father, a wealthy developer, ended more than seven years ago, only to be followed by bitter and lengthy legal battles that continue today.

Now Young, 36, is going down a path she never imagined.

“I thought by now I would be happily married, raising two kids, maybe working at an art gallery.”

As she says this, Young places her business card next to her bright pink Blackberry.

“Most Wanted Deadbeats,” the card says. She is founder and CEO.

“I never thought I’d end up being this girl.”

Love gone bad

Love did it. Love, Young says, is what transformed a conservative Mormon, raised in Irvine, Calif., and active in the church, into a crusader in the often nasty arena of divorce and child-support.

In 1997, Young was 24 and working in a Laguna Beach, Calif., art gallery when she met Steve Rebeil, then 35.

He was a Las Vegas homebuilder with a house in Newport Beach, Calif., and he’d wandered into the gallery to kill time. She handed him her business card and, a few days later, he contacted her.

They started dating. They fell in love. They lived a good life.

Three years later, Young says, love turned ugly. Pregnant with Rebeil’s child, Young says she discovered that he was married and had three children.

She broke off with Rebeil and filed a lawsuit, alleging that he broke a promise to marry her and take care of their child.

The case was settled in December 2002, with Rebeil agreeing to pay child support of $4,000 a month. Two years later, when Rebeil filed a request to lower his payment, a judge denied his request and, instead, more than doubled the amount he was supposed to pay.

Then things turned even uglier.

Rebeil, Young says, wasn’t paying child support. And, frustrated that the court-ordered payment wasn’t being enforced, she took her battle to the court of public opinion č the Internet.

Young launched a Web site, www.steverebeil.com, describing him as a father dodging child support. Rebeil was outraged, and sued Young to get her to take down the site. He lost.

But publicity about Young’s legal drama changed her life. She was a name, of sorts, and women (and some men) sought her advice on how to get former spouses or boyfriends to pay what courts had ordered them to pay.

Back to court

By 2007, Young was representing herself in family court. At one point, Rebeil’s attorney watched as Young arrived in court with documents filed inside her son’s Spider-man backpack.

That case ended in January 2008, when Rebeil was ordered to pay back child support of more than $205,000. The court also ordered him to pay monthly child support of $8,500, citing his monthly income of $326,754.

Young insists her crusade to get Rebeil to support their son isn’t mean-spirited č and not aimed at enriching herself. The $8,500 a month translates to $102,000 a year. And, she says, getting the money consistently hasn’t been easy.

“I have invested the majority of my child support into my son’s private education,” says Young, who lives with Cole in a Costa Mesa, Calif., duplex.

“I am not a shopper or big spender. I make damn sure that I live and spend modestly.”

New Web site

When she hands out her business card, Young gets various reactions. A friend called her a cross between Erin Brockovich and a bounty hunter. Others haven’t been so flattering, making her out to be some sort of gold-digging vigilante. That’s the mix of reactions you get when you do launch a Web site called www.mostwanteddeadbeats.com.

Modeled after TV’s “America’s Most Wanted,” members will be allowed to post profiles of alleged “deadbeats” that Young verifies through court orders.

She says she doesn’t want to expose parents who can’t pay because they are poor or in prison. Rather, she says, she’s going after parents who have the money, but choose to ignore their legal obligation.

More than anything, Young wants her Web site to be useful. It launched this week, with sample profiles in place of real ones until members start signing up.

Members receive automatic alerts when a tip is submitted by the public that may contain information to help them enforce child-support orders.

“There are a lot of government-run Web sites out there, but they are typically confusing,” Young says. “And they’re not easy for the average (non lawyer) person to understand.”

Young’s site, which features free and “premium membership” options (up to $30 a year) also allows users to interact with other members, receive advice from lawyers and other experts, and download state child-support forms.

“I designed it so parents can empower themselves, educate themselves and get some realistic expectations about (payments),” Young says.

Collecting child-support money is a 50/50 deal. According to the California Department of Child Support Services, only about half the money owed in child support is collected.

Nationwide, unpaid child support is estimated at more than $100 billion.