Class Notes Updated February 2012
Jeanette Lebell is working part-time as an independent contractor for a few attorneys which has its ups and downs. She’s living and working in Sebastopol which is one of the "ups." She’s recently begun to fill some of her slow periods by taking classes at the local community college. She loves being a student again and reports “who knows in what new career I might end up.”
Lynn Strom is working for Lexipol, writing police policy for California, Arizona, Oregon, and Nevada agencies. She gets to telecommute from her home in Red Bluff and only sees her boss once or twice a year. She still camps with Bill and Cindy Chisum and family every summer and keeps up on Facebook with Peter Hwu, Ross, Dina, and Peter Castillo. Her daughters are in high school and everyone is healthy and happy.
Rick Cohen continues to practice family law in Sacramento as a Certified Family Law Specialist. He is married with two children (Sam who is five years old and Bonnie who is two years old).
Changes are afoot for Cynthia Patton who is in the process of starting her own law firm, which will focus on special education and special needs. Lots of paperwork and processing delays, but she should be up and running sometime this spring. She blames Jim Chou who suggested she hang out a shingle last fall when they saw each other at Peter Feinberg’s 50th birthday party. Cynthia has been the Belle of Ball attending Peter’s birthday party (“fun for all who attended”), having dinner with Boyd [Sprehn I assume] who was in Sacramento for the day from the Virgin Islands [Boyd, for future reference Cynthia moved back to the Bay Area so it’s a bit of drive to get to Sacto these days], and getting Jim Chou drunk to celebrate his becoming a Marin County Superior Court Judge. She reports that Jim Garcia is back in Cali after an extended stay in the UK, Steve Mitsuoka is back as well from Boston and Scott Lane got married for the first time.
Tilden Kim reported in. But all he had to report is Scott Lane’s marriage and Jim Chou’s elevation to the bench. Sorry, Tilden, you were slow on the trigger and Cynthia beat you with that news.
Our esteemed Governor must be out of his mind because he also elevated John Vineyard to the bench in Riverside County. Two King Hall alumni in the same year, preposterous.
And the prize for best report comes from Bruce Johnson who wrote: “Thanks for the message, John.” You’re welcome Bruce.
Reunions 2009
Submitted by JOHN HOCHHAUSLER
After reading GUY STILSON'S e-mail I've decided I need to trade lives with him. His e-mail read: "Hi guys! Not much new here. I'm a partner at Low, Ball & Lynch, a San Francisco litigation firm. Not married, but living with Irene Shin (King Hall class of '90). No kids, two dogs: Lola, a Great Dane, and Dell, a boxer/pointer mix. We live across the street from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco; from the back deck we have a nice view of the mouth of San Francisco Bay and the Marin Headlands, except when it's foggy (which is often). Our neighbor has a new puppy, and our dogs have been trying to tunnel under the fence to go meet the puppy. As a result, I have spent many weekends trying to foil their efforts by installing barriers of various types and have become an expert with cement and chicken wire. So far I've kept them from actually getting under the fence, but they've dug some tunnels that would impress coal miners! As you may know, I occasionally produce independent feature films: my latest is called Maladaptive, which is a romantic comedy about dysfunctional relationships. It was shown at a few film festivals last year and got good reviews. I'm now looking for another project. I've still got the same old Buick convertible I had in law school, but have supplemented it with three even older cars: a modified 1964 Corvette convertible, a stock 1964 Cadillac Sedan deVille, and a very modified 1965 Plymouth Belvedere II, which although technically street legal, is set up for drag racing (650 hp, low 11 second quarter mile at about 118 mph - I can easily break into the low 100s if I ever get the courage to use the nitrous oxide system). I'd love to get a few more cars, but I'm fresh out of parking spots. Somehow I got into collecting Oriental carpets, and Irene and I are planning on going to Turkey next year on a carpet investigating/buying tour, unless the political/war situation there doesn't permit it. Earlier this year we chartered a yacht with some friends and sailed around the British Virgin Islands - that was the most relaxing vacation I've had in years! I serve as a judge pro tem for San Francisco and Santa Clara, and I enjoy that a lot. I mostly preside over settlement conferences, although I do the occasional arbitration as well. I generally serve twice a month, but occasionally will do three times a month. That's pretty much all the news from here."
JOHN VINEYARD purchased season tickets for the New Orleans Saints. While this is a truly idiotic thing to do since Vineyard lives in Riverside, your editor [ JOHN HOCHHAUSLER] is glad he did since Vineyard and I are flying out to New Orleans for four days of alcohol and great food before watching the opening game (Monday night football no less). John has already taken a picture of the back of my head so that when I wander off and pass out face first in the gutter on Bourbon Street he can ask passers by if they have seen me. In related news, your editor spent two weeks in Munich, Germany doing some Hurricane Katrina work for Munich Re in January. It was a great two weeks of communing with people who can actually pronounce my name. The company cafeteria serves a free lunch for every employee which includes all the beer you can drink on tap. I actually got tired of drinking beer with lunch and grabbed a coke one day to which my startled lunch companion responded in total seriousness and I quote "Why would you drink a Coke when you could have a nice healthful beer." This proves that I wasn't an alcoholic in law school, I'm just genetically predisposed to eat healthy.
LYNN STROM reports that she camped with BILL and CINDY CHISUM and family Memorial Day weekend at Calavaras Big Trees, in the snow. They had a great, if cold, time, with a crew of 20 cops, D.A.'s and assorted lawyers and accountants, good wine and lots of firewood. She also met the Chisums at Davis for Picnic Day. Other fun trips included a fiddle contest in Carson City where her 8 year old Jillian placed in the top five for the first time, and a trip to the state spelling bee with 10 year old Bethany after she won both school and county bees. Lynn is learning to play the fiddle, too, and has also learned that she is a lousy speller. In her "free" time, she is preparing some quilt patterns for the retail market. After 17 years as a prosecutor, she is looking for life outside law enforcement; something with less stress, some new challenges, more family time. CYNTHIA PATTON advises that after bailing out of private practice and a brief stint in environmental consulting, she worked as an editor and then ran the habitat restoration program for the nonprofit Save the Bay (otherwise known as the Save San Francisco Bay Association). It was a fabulous job, even though she worked 16-hour days for a fraction of what she would have made as an attorney. While she was at STB she helped preserve over 20,000 acres of diked baylands (degraded former tidal wetlands) and wrote two books: Protecting Local Wetlands: A Toolbox for Your Community and Turning Salt Into Environmental Gold: Wetland Restoration in the South San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds. Portions of the first book are used in several courses at UC Berkeley, but apparently not at UCD. In January 2004, she and her husband adopted a baby girl. They did an open adoption, so they were at the hospital when Katie was born and they know the birthparents ("a strange but oddly beautiful relationship" Cynthia reports). Instead of returning to work, Cynthia decided to write her first "real" book. It's a memoir about their journey through infertility and adoption. One of the chapters is being published in an anthology this fall, which sounds exciting until you learn that she's being paid with a few copies of the currently untitled book. [Ed. note. If Guy Stilson wants to option the film rights, I'll give you both a good rate on the legal work.]
Cynthia ran into BOYD SPREHN in downtown Oakland on his last day of work for the City of Oakland. He was relocating to the Caribbean (St Thomas, Virgin Islands) for a new job. Everyone is invited to visit him. No need to RSVP, just show up.
DEBORAH ALEXANDER is the Second VP, Assistant General Counsel at Transamerica where she has been for 11 years now. She is living in Culver City and working in Downtown LA. No kids but two great cats. Deborah promises to stop at two so she doesn't become the crazy lady with cats. She reports she is "giving up on finding Mr. Right, and may just settle for Mr. Right Now." [Ed. note: Applications for Mr. Right Now can be sent to Deborah.Alexander@transamerica.com] She had a great trip to China in '04 and is thinking of going back for another trip. She is doing some work now on Pac Rim stuff for her company, as well as a little bit of just about everything else.
DAWN ROSS advises that she had a great summer and went camping with Bill and Cindy Chisum and their two daughters over the 4th of July [Ed. note: What, too chicken for the snow trip with Lynn Strom and the Chisums?] and they had KAIA EAKIN and her husband Brian for a visit in July too. They just returned from a trip to Club Med, Ixtapa, Mexico last week ("a great way to vacation with kids if you have not tried it"). Her son Joshua (age 3), started preschool this week. She is still enjoying the practice of law it immensely and her firm is up to 13 attorneys.
Our conclusion comes from CRAIG MORRISON who reports that our old house, "The Pit," has been torn down and replaced by an apartment. I still fondly remember the Halloween Party where Craig, dressed as "Captain Cabbage," beat a head of cabbage into Cole slaw with a baseball bat in the living room of The Pit. Ahh memories.