In 2005, Santa Maria resident Melissa’s* daughter, Stephanie*, was a happy and healthy 16-year-old. She went to school, hung out with friends, and spent time with her family.
“She was always a happy-go-lucky child. She was always very spirited,” Melissa said of her daughter.
All of that began to change when a relative moved in, bringing with him a friend: 24-year-old Robert*.
“When I first met him, I told Stephanie, ‘I don’t like him,’” Melissa recalled. “She’d tell me, ‘Give him a chance, mom. He’s trying.’ But something just didn’t feel right.”
Gut feelings aside, the family welcomed the young man into their home. Life went along normally for a few months as they all adjusted. But in February 2006, unbeknownst to her, Melissa’s worst fears about her guest began to come true.
In recounting the events, Stephanie told of increasing attention from Robert, attention that escalated from gift buying and sometimes confusing conversations to threatening behavior and abuse that lasted for months.
She kept silent out of fear. Finally, her sister witnessed a disturbing event—Robert grabbed Stephanie’s arm and forced her against a wall—and told their father.
The next day, Stephanie and her dad went for a drive.
“He kept asking me what was going on and I couldn’t say anything,” Stephanie recalled. “Then he asked me, ‘Do you want me to kick him out?’ And I said yes.”
A few days after Robert had been kicked out, Stephanie was rushed to the hospital suffering from physical complaints. While running tests, they also learned the 17-year-old was pregnant.
Getting help
Consumed with grief and anger, Melissa went to the District Attorney’s office to press charges.
“After I found out what happened, I kept thinking, ‘We can’t afford a restraining order. I don’t know what we’re going to do,’” Melissa said.
To get a restraining order, the family would have to file a civil suit. In Santa Barbara County, temporary restraining orders are filed and processed free of charge. Serving someone with a long-term restraining order, however, can be much more time consuming and expensive.
A staff member at the District Attorney’s Victim-Witness Assistance Program suggested they go to the Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara County for help. The nonprofit organization provides legal assistance and representation to low-income residents throughout the county.
At the North County Legal Aid office in Santa Maria, the family met senior staff attorney Rick Corbo.
“It was actually really nice and comforting going in there,” Stephanie said of her first visit to Legal Aid. “I was really jumpy around guys at that time, but not with him.”
Following Legal Aid’s principles, Corbo took on Stephanie’s case for a practically pro-bono price. For several months, the attorney guided the family through the court system, his legal expertise and constant support helping the family through one of its most trying times.
“He showed up to every court hearing,” she said. “It meant everything knowing that he was there but he didn’t have to be.”
Within 24 hours of filing with the court, Stephanie was granted a temporary restraining order. Receiving a restraining order, Corbo later explained to the Sun, is an essential component of the legal process.
“The restraining order gives her the breathing space to change her life for the better,” Corbo said.
Once a long-term restraining order was in place, Stephanie was able to focus on healing and, with the help of her family, taking care of her newborn son.
Going to Legal Aid and getting the restraining order, Melissa said, had a transformational effect on her daughter.
“I told Rick, ‘You gave my daughter back to me. When she first came here she was just a shell of a girl. Now she’s alive; She vibrant; she’s glowing,’” Melissa said.
Robert eventually pleaded no contest to a count of sex with a minor and one of criminal threats.
To serve and protect
For the past 50 years, Legal Aid has helped thousands of Santa Barbara County residents obtain justice. Ellen Goodstein, Legal Aid’s executive director, said the foundation’s two offices served approximately 5,000 people in fiscal year 2007-2008 alone.
“Without Legal Aid, our most vulnerable community members wouldn’t have anywhere to go,” Goodstein said.
In the North County, the nonprofit is the only organization offering representation to low-income families living in the area from Santa Maria to Solvang. Cases are accepted on a walk-in basis; however, many of the foundation’s clients are referred by the District Attorney’s office, and local attorneys, law enforcement, and social service organizations.
“There’s no one we don’t get private referrals from,” said Yvonne Cudney, director of litigation for the Santa Maria office.
Obtaining restraining orders for domestic violence and elder abuse victims, she said, is the most crucial service Legal Aid provides.
“Those cases always take priority because the client’s physical and emotional well-being is in danger,” she added.
Many of Legal Aid’s other cases revolve around personal property, including small claims, eviction and collection notices, and foreclosures.
The foundation also works on public benefits cases, securing MediCal and Social Security benefits for elderly and disabled clients, and handles regulation code enforcements for the county.
When legal representation is required, one of the office’s attorneys is assigned the case. Such an uneven ratio between lawyers and clients, however, makes providing legal assistance an ongoing challenge.
“A private attorney might spend all day making calls for those Golden Egg cases—the moneymaking cases. We get calls all day from people in crisis,” senior attorney Corbo said. “There’s no way we could help everyone because of our limited resources, so we have to determine which cases are the most urgent.”
If professional representation isn’t required, clients are referred to the Legal Resource Center, which is run in the North County by a Legal Aid staff member.
Located in the Santa Maria Law Library, the Legal Resource Center provides information about legal documents and procedures. Staff members and volunteers working at the Legal Resource Center refrain from giving clients any legal advice, but they offer the tools necessary to help them through the court system.
“I act as an educator,” said Eileen Mackin-Getzoff, the Legal Aid staff attorney who runs the Legal Resource Center.
Mackin-Getzoff and a handful of volunteers help clients fill out legal paperwork and research their legal options. Often, some of the volunteers have to interpret legal information to clients in other languages, from Spanish to Vietnamese to Thai.
“The goal is to make sure they’ll learn something other than just putting their name on a piece of paper,” she said. “The more we can teach them and the more we can get them to do things on their own, the better they’ll fare in the courtroom.”
The services provided by Legal Aid and the Legal Resource Center, Mackin-Getzoff said, help provide equal access to justice.
“Justice is not accessible to everyone,” she said.
There are many barriers stopping people from receiving equal access to the justice system, the biggest of which is a lack of resources.
According to a 2005 report from the California Commission on Access to Justice, out of the roughly 166,000 attorneys practicing in California, only 750 are Legal Aid attorneys. For each of those 750 attorneys, there are approximately 8,360 low-income clients in need of representation. That number has increased dramatically in the last four years.
Many of the attorneys work for nonprofit organizations, which get funding through the federal Legal Services Corporation or the State Bar’s Legal Services Trust Fund Program. More funding comes from the Justice Gap Fund, a state bill signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. The law authorizes the State Bar to collect voluntary donations from its members. The Access to Justice report, however, found that current funding addresses less than 28 percent of the legal needs of the state’s poor and lower-income residents.
To continue providing services to Santa Barbara County’s residents, Legal Aid holds annual public fundraisers. But even fundraising can be difficult, director of litigation Cudney said.
“[Legal Aid] is not sexy. Sometimes I think we would get more funding if we put a cute face on it,” she said, adding that people might choose to contribute to other nonprofits because “there’s no downside.”
“A lot of people could view us as agitators,” she said. “Really, we’re trying to improve access to legal aid and quality of life for all people.”
Their work might not be glamorous, but all of the North County Legal Aid employees said what they do is essential to upholding democracy.
“When we empower people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they can change their lives forever through the skills they’ve learned,” senior attorney Corbo said. “We’ve given them resources that they can use for any future problems they might have.”
The satisfaction of watching people transform themselves from victims to victors, Corbo said, far outweighs the stress and the relatively small paycheck that comes with it.
“It’s those little tidbits of the end of the rainbow that makes what we do worth doing,” he said.
Healing from the past
Today, Stephanie is a happy and healthy wife and mother. Robert is completely out of the picture—in another state.
The last few years for Stephanie and her family have been difficult. Still, her mom, Melissa, said obtaining justice for her daughter has been worth every struggle.
“I got to watch her blossom into a confident young woman again,” she said.
That transformation, she said, is one she hopes every victim is able to experience.
“We just want other girls to know … There are people out there who can help you get justice,” she said. m
* These names have been changed.
Contact Staff Writer Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 5-12, 2009.