Dave Pelzer

Dave Pelzer is one of those people whose story genuinely stops you in your tracks. Born in Daly City, California in 1960, he survived years of severe abuse at the hands of his own mother — the kind of childhood that most people couldn't process, let alone turn into a bestselling memoir. And yet that's exactly what he did: his 1995 book "A Child Called It" spent years on the New York Times Best Seller list and sold well over a million copies, not because it was an easy read, but because it was brutally honest. What gets me is that he didn't just survive and disappear — he served in the U.S. Air Force, built a life, and then had the guts to go back and write it all down so others wouldn't feel alone in their own pain. That takes a specific kind of courage that's hard to put a name to.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Dave Pelzer

Name (Japanese)

デイヴ・ペルザー

Reading

でいゔ・ぺるざー

Born

December 29, 1960 (age 65)

Origin

Daly City, California, United States

Occupation

writer / United States Air Force

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Rat

High school

Westmoor High School

• Official sitehttps://www.davepelzer.com
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave%20Pelzer
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%87%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B4%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9A%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B6%E3%83%BC
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1173311

Tags

• California
• writer
• United States Air Force

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.