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A military brat born in the late 1960s, Sarah MacKenzie had a troubled childhood; her mother abandoned her and her alcoholic father on the night of Mac's 15th birthday. Her father, Joseph MacKenzie, a non-commissioned officer in the Marine Corps, was physically abusive towards her mother, and emotionally and verbally abusive to Mac. As a partial result of this, Mac became an alcoholic in her mid-to-late teens and had no contact with her mother Deanne (Conchata Ferrell) until she reappeared at her father's deathbed. She also learns at this time that her large white mutt, named Ruggles, was abandoned at a boarding house during her mother's travels after fleeing from her abusive father. She showed more sympathy for her father's efforts to be a good dad, pathetic as they were, and more anger at her mother for leaving them to fend for themselves.

Sarah MacKenzie ran away from home when she was 17 (her junior year of high school), and apparently married Christopher Ragle a year later. They were both drunk for much of their married life. He was later arrested and sent to prison for motor vehicle theft. At some point, Mac finished high school. On the night of her graduation, she was traveling in a car with her friend Eddie. They were both drunk, and were involved in a car accident that killed Eddie. Her uncle USMC Colonel Matthew O'Hara took her to Red Rock Mesa, Arizona, to dry out. Mac later repaid the debt owed to him by making sure he did not get killed during an incident where he and a group of rogue Marines hijacked a van transporting the Declaration of Independence.

After graduating from high school and then at some point earning a bachelor's degree, Sarah MacKenzie joined the Marine Corps and received her commission through Officer Candidate School.

The first known assignment for Mac in the canon was at the grade of first lieutenant at the Headquarters and Service Battalion in Okinawa, Japan, as an administrative officer under John Farrow. It was under his recommendation that Mac was sponsored by the Marine Corps to earn a law degree at Duke University School of Law.

While stationed in Okinawa, Mac engaged in an affair with her superior officer John Farrow. Unbeknownst to Mac, Christopher Ragle followed her to Okinawa and discovered the affair. She was stationed in Bosnia and Herzegovina a year before the events in at the start of the second season, at some point with 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines ("Two Nine") for unknown duration, and given the time-line, was likely part of or associated with the Implementation Force (IFOR), following the 1995 Dayton Agreement.

As a major, she was subsequently assigned to JAG headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia when she was pulled off a double homicide investigation to work on a case involving her uncle Colonel Matthew O'Hara (Carmen Argenziano) who had the stolen Declaration of Independence. Lured by her then-boyfriend Dalton Lowne (Larry Poindexter) and the glamour of private legal practice, she resigned her commission to work as an attorney at the White-shoe law firm "Lowell, Hanson and Lowne". However, soon changing her mind after successfully defending Harm pro bono in a court martial, she asked Rear Admiral A.J. Chegwidden (John M. Jackson), Judge Advocate General of the Navy to take her back at JAG. Chegwidden gave her back her letter of resignation, claiming he had been "too busy to process it" (despite having had at least four weeks in which to do so).

When Christopher Ragle (Joe Lando) caught up to Mac at JAG headquarters in 1998, he attempted to use the information regarding her earlier affair with her former superior officer John Farrow (Ben Murphy) to blackmail her for money. Farrow paid Ragle the money he demanded, but Ragle threatened to kill him anyway. Mac tried to wrestle the gun out of Ragle's hand, but it accidentally went off and killed him instead.

Upon her return she was temporarily assigned many menial tasks as in the administrative law department, and was informed by Admiral Chegwidden that he had withdrawn his recommendation for an accelerated promotion. However, Mac was subsequently promoted to lieutenant colonel off-screen between the fourth and fifth seasons, after Admiral Chegwidden's renewal of his recommendation for her accelerated promotion.

Mac bears an uncanny resemblance to Lieutenant Diane Schonke, a United States Naval Academy classmate of Harm who he had been dating before she was murdered, which initially made Harm uneasy, though he soon got past it. However, Mac was unaware of the resemblance until the third season, when Harm had worked out who had really killed Schonke. Harm, Bud, and later, Sturgis Turner, who were aware of the resemblance, had never mentioned it to Mac, who only found out by finding a picture of Schonke in Harm's apartment, in an old shoebox; it was t