Jeffery W. Olsen was born in 1954 in Salt Lake City, has six siblings, and enjoys a rich and varied heritage. After a botched Ulpanim trip to Israel in 1972, underestimating the effects of the Munich Olympics, he served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two years in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He returned home and married Sylvia Lee Rost, a native of Nevada, in 1976, and they are the parents of five children. Most of his life has been spent in western Nevada, where he graduated from UNR, then at times ranged through the deserts and mountains, the benefactor of celestial tolerance and erudition.