#MyPathToLaw: One Immigrant's Journey
Later, I was assigned to misdemeanors court. The first day was arraignment day. The judge, through a Spanish-speaking interpreter, asked everyone who was there for driving without a valid license to move into the jury box. A group of about 30 men stood and walked over. There were too many of them for the jury box, so they huddled around it. They looked tired, with leathered skin from working in the fields, their hands and fingers swollen.
The judge had the interpreter tell them his rule. “The first time you’re caught, it’s a fine. Second time, it’s 10 days in jail. Third time, 364 days.” For comparison, a third-time DUI carried with it a minimum mandatory sentence of 30 days.
One by one, the men were asked to plead. Those who pleaded guilty were sentenced according to the judge’s rule. Often, the defendants didn’t understand the consequences of pleading guilty and, more than once, would start wailing when they were taken straight from arraignment to jail. Those who didn’t plead were assigned a public defender and set for trial.
This was deeply traumatizing. Although I was in the U.S. legally, I could see myself and my family in the faces and stories of these workers.
Bryan Stevenson asks in his book Just Mercy: “Why do we want to kill all the broken people?” I didn’t try capital cases, but his question resonates with me. As an assistant state attorney, I saw how we want to lock away, criminalize and shun people who are broken.
Like most state attorneys’ offices, we were overworked—I had over 250 cases—and there was no time. I was burning out, desperately trying to keep my head above water, and having regular nightmares of seeing my parents in the jury box—nightmares of their being taken away from me for 364 days.
I needed a change. So, I moved from Tampa, Florida, to the Bay Area. I met my husband, Jeff Curl, who is also a lawyer, and we started a bankruptcy practice. This was the perfect practice area for me, even though it doesn’t make me very popular at cocktail parties. I get to help people who are experiencing financial trauma and give them a fresh start. It is healing and restorative.
The first bankruptcy case I ever filed was for a very sweet 69-year-old immigrant. He was HIV-positive and struggling with bipolar depression. After meeting with a group of creditors, we hugged, and he cried.
I started practicing mindfulness and meditation in 2011 after being diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. This eventually led to co-authoring a book for ABA Publishing, The Anxious Lawyer with Karen Gifford.
Here’s what I know: While my 12-year-old self’s understanding of how our justice system works was flawed and naive, what I’ve retained is the deep desire to make a difference, to create a better world, and to live with compassion.
As Rainer Maria Rilke writes in his book Letters to a Young Poet, “The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Every day, I live with the question “What would be the most kind, generous and compassionate response?” I am practicing living into the answer.
#MyPathToLaw celebrates the diversity of the legal profession through attorneys’ first-person stories detailing their unique and inspiring trajectories. Read more #mypathtolaw stories on Twitter, where the hashtag was created by Exeter University lecturer Matthew Channon.
