Born in Chicago , Illinois, she was the only child of strict Catholic parents. Her father was a medical doctor.
When O'Hara was 17, she went to a party and met another girl who was sporting expensive jewelry. The girl's boyfriend was a pimp and introduced O'Hara to prostitution so she could also have jewellery.
Initially she worked in Chicago, but later moved around the US mainland. Police records show that between and O'Hara had been arrested for prostitution three times. Finally she was banned from Monterey County, California , for two years and given a suspended 90 day prison sentence in April O'Hara was probably working in a high-class brothel in San Francisco when she was recruited to work in Honolulu.
When Honolulu madams needed new prostitutes, they sent a "mail order" to agents, usually in San Francisco, to recruit them and arrange transport to Hawaii. The steamers were met by a detective. They were then taken to the police station, where they were fingerprinted and photographed. From there she was taken to the brothel where she was to work [ 3 ] in Hotel Street. After a few months she had saved a considerable sum.
She decided to live outside the red-light district and rented a house near Waikiki Beach with her friend Betty. After the vice squad objected as prostitutes were not supposed to live outside the red-light district, the two women moved to the Pacific Heights area.
