Singularly Suellen

A decade ago, Suellen Pritchard came to the Center looking for help in turning her life around. But that’s only where the story, and her remarkable contributions to the Center’s work, begins.

In early February, in the space of time it takes to run across the street for a cup of coffee before the morning brings its latest cavalcade of challenges to her door, CFJ’s Community Advocacy coordinator Suellen Pritchard slowed down long enough for Tim Connor to ask her about how she experienced the Center’s first ten years.

Q. Let’s start at the beginning, how’d you find out about the Center for Justice?

SP: Well, it was kind of a bleak time in my life. I was going through the Spokane County Drug Court program and CPS [the state's Child Protective Services] had my kids, they had just taken my kids and they were placed with my mother in law, who I felt sure was scamming me. And it was just the way I was thinking, with the way things were going at the time. But, I had decided I wanted to go back to Kansas, which is where my family was because I didn’t have any family support up here. And I had decided I needed to go through what I needed to go through with the support of my family. I decided to go and see Judge Murphy. He was the judge that was overseeing the drug court at the time. So, I went in and tried to explain to him. Actually, I went barreling (laughs) back to his chambers and was told I could not see the judge in his chambers, that it was not ethical.

Q. But you literally broke in on him?

SP: I was a little bit loud and Judge Murphy actually heard me out in the foyer and came out and said, I’ll talk to her. So, we went back into his chambers and I can remember this long table and Judge Murphy was on the other side from me and I was spewing my story to him. And he was looking at me. I said, ‘they’re trying to take my children and I just want to go back to my parents and I need the support from them and I think these people are just trying to take my kids and blah, blah, blah. And Judge Murphy looked at me and he said, ‘you know, I’ll do that for you. I’ll let you go back to Kansas. I’ll give you a ten thousand dollar fine for your charge and I’ll give you ten years to pay it. We’ll transfer your case down to Kansas. And you can go.’ But, he said the only thing is you’re going to take both of your felonies. I didn’t have any felonies on my record. And they were both drug charges.

Q. And they were pending?

SP: They were. And when you go through drug court, they get dismissed. Drug court is a very intense program and, at the time, I didn’t know what it involved or anything. I just knew I wanted to go home. So, at that point, he looked at me, and he asked me about the kids, and about the case with the kids and how it came about. I told him. And he wrote on this little yellow piece of paper, The Center for Justice and Gloria Finn Porter. And he gave it to me. He said, ‘I want you to go see these people, because they will help you.’ And I said, okay. He said let me know your decision, if you decide to opt into drug court, if that’s what you decide, or you don’t decide, let me know your decision. So, I had to report to drug court the following Monday. And Judge Murphy was on the bench. And when they called me, he started out saying, “I just want you to know, Ms. Oien, that you cannot come see me in my chambers like that again.” (Laughs). I was mortified and embarrassed. And the Judge kind of chuckled.

Q. Was he being stern?

SP: He was trying to be (laughs). But he chuckled. And he asked me what my decision was, you know he said, “have you decided to go to Kansas?” And I said no, your honor, I decided not to go to Kansas, but I do have a request. I would like to go to in-patient treatment, which I’d requested of the drug court team, and they had denied me. He said, “yes, by all means, allow her go to treatment.” There it went, from there. So Judge Murphy is my hero.

“I did re-licensing for a couple years, and that’s all I did, eight hours a day, five days a week, I ran people through that relicensing program. But I would sit and listen to their stories, you know, and while they’re all unique, they’re all the same. It’s poverty. It’s being criminalized for being poor. It’s the whole structure. And just creating justice for those people, and not only getting their licenses back but also by treating them humanely and understanding them.”

Q. So did you go to the Center after that hearing?

SP: No, I went to the Center after I went for treatment. I went to a treatment center in Wenatchee and when I got out I went to the Center for Justice back in Spokane and did an interview Kim Love, who was the intern at the time. It was when the Center was in the Minnesota Building, and it was in a room with a long table, and we did about an hour long interview. She took down all the details of my kids, and what was going on with my whole life. I mean she wanted to know about my credit problems, I didn’t have a driver’s license at the time, she wanted to know about that. And I couldn’t figure out where she was coming from at the time. I was like, “what does this have to do with my kids?” It all later came into the picture. But then she told me that we’ll make a decision on whether or not to take your case and we’ll send you a letter in the mail. So, you know, I can kind of relate to the clients that come through Community Advocacy now in wondering, is my case going to get accepted. Because it was very, very important to me, as it is to people who come through now, whether or not they were going to take my case. I remember getting the letter in the mail, and I remember getting it out of the mailbox that day, Center for Justice, did they deny me or did they take my case? And they had taken my case. They wanted me to come back in and talk to them.

Q. Had you told them that Judge Murphy had referred you?

SP: Yeah, and somewhere in my boxes I have that piece of paper. I kept it. The little sticky note from Judge Murphy.

Q. So you come to the Center, you turn your life around, and then another relationship with the Center developed. How did that happen?

SP: They helped me get my kids back, I went through a divorce and they represented me through my divorce. I was actually one of the very first driver relicensing clients for Spokane County. The driver re-licensing program started at the City’s offices right after that but they used me and another gal as guinea pigs to see if this re-licensing program would fly, and put together documents and see how it would work, and how the prosecutors and judges would take to it. It was different then. I had to go see Judge Padden every single month for a whole year. They scheduled special hearings for just me and that girl. We talked to judge about what was going on. (Laughs) It was kind of like drug court only it was about getting our licenses back. And I had some credit issues and the Center helped me. There was an intern by the name of Duke working at the Center when it was over on First Avenue, and he helped me to do a DSHS hearing to get some stuff off my credit, get some hospital bills paid, that kind of stuff.

Q. So basically you had so many problems to overcome that it runs the gamut of everything that you’re helping others with now.

SP: Yeah. So then, after we got all of my issues under control, Gloria [Finn Porter] suggested I go back to school to get my paralegal degree. So I did. It was kind of bizarre because I look back now and I realize I used those people as stepping stones, so to speak, to get out of a hole I was in and put my life back together for me and my children. And Barb Rielly was actually the instructor out at SCC for the legal secretary piece. I did a legal secretary/paralegal combination. And her husband Neal Rielly was actually the judge that was the judge on my dependency case for my kids. So it was all sort of intertwined. Judge Murphy and Judge Rielly and Barb. Barb Rielly knew a little bit of my history and she was very, very helpful in orchestrating my staying in school and being successful in school. So then it came to my second year and I was able to get work study. So I came back to the Center to see if I could do my work study for the Center and they said, ‘well yeah, we would love to have you here.’ So I started training with a girl named Carrie Wells who was a paralegal at the time, who was doing the re-licensing program because by then it was in full swing and the Center was doing thirty, forty people a month in conjunction with the City Prosecutor’s office, just like we are now. So, she trained me to do that, and I did filing and service, probably during one of the worst winters in Spokane. And I had an old junk car, without snow tires, as I remember. (laughs). But I did filing and service for quite a while. And then the girl who was training me, decided to go to law school, and that position opened up, and the Center hired me to fill that position. So that’s how it got started.

“You know what? The experiences these kids have here they’re going to carry with them for the rest of their lives. And they’re going to take those footprints they have here and put those footprints wherever they go. And so it makes mini Centers for Justice all over the world, really, because they end up going all over the world.”

Q. What do you think they saw in you, aside from your knowledge, that made them want to bring you in?

SP: I think I had an understanding of the work and the people. I had life experience that contributed to the understanding and the know how, and just being able to make a difference in people lives. They could see that. And they could see I had the passion to create change, like they had created for me. I don’t know if you’ve seen that movie “Pay it Forward,” but that’s kind of like what it feels to me. I do now for people in the community what the Center for Justice did for me. They literally changed my life. My life today is 180 degrees different than what it was when I came to the Center.

Q: I think most people who work at the Center would agree that you, more than anyone, has put your imprint on the Center and really set the tone for the relationships that we have for people who come to us. At some point you really began to impose and insert your values into the work we are doing and I just wanted to get your thoughts on what that process was like, and when you thought you’d gained the standing and the insights to say, I think we need to go in this direction.

SP: That was a whole other chapter. I did re-licensing for a couple years, and that’s all I did, eight hours a day, five days a week, I ran people through that relicensing program. But I would sit and listen to their stories, you know, and while they’re all unique, they’re all the same. It’s poverty. It’s being criminalized for being poor. It’s the whole structure. And just creating justice for those people, and not only getting their licenses back but also by treating them humanely and understanding them.

Q. So when did you have the confidence enough not only to see what you were seeing but to say to others who work here ‘this is how we should be doing this piece?’

SP: When Breean came on board in 2004 there were a lot of cases coming through the door, a lot of intakes, and a lot of them were getting denied. While I was doing the re-licensing piece I wasn’t really aware of how profound that was. Katy Maynard was working our front desk at the time and she was getting really discouraged. She could see it and she would answer the phones from people wanting to know why their cases didn’t get accepted. And we had kind of moved at that point to doing high-impact litigation. It was just starting. So they were taking cases that were affecting policy change and affecting a larger number of people at one time. So, the people that were coming through the door with quasi-legal problems such as the ones I had, like landlord tenant and credit repair stuff, people with disabilities who couldn’t navigate the system, those kinds of things were more than likely to get denied because we just didn’t have the resources to take them. So that’s where Breean comes in. We had this seminar that Breean did and I went to this four-day seminar. We were asked the question, if we had a basket of wishes, and we could do anything with our life that we wanted to do without any restriction, time, money, space, whatever the restriction was, what would it be that I would do? Or what would we do? I thought about that for a while and I thought, “you know, I would like to open a social service agency with wrap-around services that would help people with supplying the answers that they need on a daily basis, just like I had with the Center in my life. I think a light went on with Breean. He was like, “Really?! Maybe we can arrange that.” It was not that long after that he says, “I think you have something there. I think we should try to do that. I think we should try to put some manuals together.” So he told me to take time every day, or so much time every week, shut my phones off, lock my door, and just sit down and start brainstorming what I wanted that program to look like. He said just start writing, just start writing even if it doesn’t make sense to you or to me, just let those thoughts flow. So I did, and I started thinking about how we could do that and combined with Breean’s suggestions, let’s see if we could get some students to come in or some volunteers to come in to do that. So, in January of 2005 I interviewed my first practicum student, her name was January.

Q. You’re kidding, right?

SP: No, she was an EWU practicum student and I was in the middle of a horrific case that we later took on at the Center and won of a gal where landlord, right at Christmas time, had locked her out of the house and took all of her belongings and kicked them out in the snow.

Q. Merry Christmas.

SP: Uh-huh. And she had befriended this landlord and he had totally shafted her, taken advantage of her kindness and her son’s kindness and, yeah, totally wrecked their lives temporarily. It took us about a year but we won that case, the landlord paid the back wages of the son who’d given him tons of time to fix up the apartment that they had lived in, and then kicked them out of it as soon as they got it all ready. So, that was one of the first cases that we took in Community Advocacy, and it worked out really well.

“It’s kind of intimidating when you’re poor and homeless and you go into a lawyer’s office and ask for help. I think the word has gotten out that it is a safe haven and people treat you humanely, with dignity, and they really care, regardless of you circumstance. We help probably six hundred people a year who probably, otherwise, wouldn’t have any place to go.”

Q. So Breean’s seminar and that task for you was the seed of the Community Advocacy program?

SP: Right.

Q. There are so many new people coming in all the time to work on that program, students, interns, etcetera. And yet it seems to me that the people we bring in to work in Community Advocacy they develop a deep passion for what we’re trying to do in this program. How do you do that? What do you try to instill in them that makes them want to embrace the work even though I think you’d agree the work can be very hectic and stressful?

SP: Oh yeah, it is pretty hectic and stressful, and it can be especially hectic and stressful when they’re first starting. And I always worry about that component of it because I think they’re either going to make it or break it. I do a brief little training and pretty much they hit the ground running. I give ‘em a case. To me every case we take in Community Advocacy is a compelling case. There’s always an injustice that’s been done that needs justice for it. And so that’s what I instill in the kids. Every piece of what we do at the Center makes an impact on the people that we help. Every piece. From answering the phone, to doing an intake, to solving or not solving their case. It impacts their lives. And to make sure that that impact, no matter what it looks like, even if we don’t win their case, is positive; that they still experience justice in some way shape or form. That’s what I instill in the kids. Because, you know what? The experiences these kids have here they’re going to carry with them for the rest of their lives. And they’re going to take those footprints they have here and put those footprints wherever they go. And so It makes mini Centers for Justice all over the world, really, because they end up going all over the world. They go to Africa and they take their experience, wanting to create justice for those people who are starving and living in the garbage cities and on and on and on. You know, I have a little gal Molly Brunner, she did the re-licensing program for me, and she moved down to Kansas, and she now lives about thirty miles from where I grew up. She married a minister and she’s now trying to start a re-licensing program in this little biddy community in Kansas.

Q. Given that it will always be true that we can’t do everything, what’s the biggest difference that CA makes for the community?

SP: There are a couple other legal service agencies in town and they are limited in what they do also. I think the Community Advocacy program, the more well-known it has gotten, people feel safer coming to us. It’s kind of intimidating when you’re poor and homeless and you go into a lawyer’s office and ask for help. I think the word has gotten out that it is a safe haven and people treat you humanely, with dignity, and they really care, regardless of you circumstance. We help probably six hundred people a year who probably, otherwise, wouldn’t have any place to go.”

Q. You designed the toolbox and not every social service agency gets to do that on the fly, I would imagine.

SP: Yeah, because we don’t have the restriction, the red tape that says you can’t help this person because he’s got this kind of record, or you can’t help this person because they get government assistance. There’s no red tape.

Q. So while we don’t serve as many people as some other social service areas, what you’re saying is we may be better suited for some of the trickier cases because of the work you’ve done on the front end.

SP: Yeah, exactly, for some of those complex cases. And I think we have the ability and I guess the passion to help people that other agencies might turn away, for whatever reason, mental illness, criminal history.

Q. But isn’t this due, in part, because of the things you thought should be in our tool box?

SP: Yeah and the reason why I thought they should be in the toolbox is because they are human beings. I mean They live in our neighborhood, they live in our world, and they deserve justice just like anyone else, no matter what service agency they go to, they are breathing the same air we breathe.

“I think I had an understanding of the work and the people. I had life experience that contributed to the understanding and the know how, and just being able to make a difference in people lives. They could see that. And they could see I had the passion to create change, like they had created for me. I don’t know if you’ve seen that movie “Pay it Forward,” but that’s kind of like what it feels to me. I do now for people in the community what the Center for Justice did for me.”

Q. If you had three wishes, for the Center, what would those be?

SP: That we would continue being successful. That we would continue the work that we do, that’s my main wish, through the Community Advocacy program, through the attorneys. I think it’s very important that the Center’s here. It would be nice to be able to do a survey of all the people that have gotten help. And that is one of the things I want to work on this years, is to be together a survey for our clients to fill out when they leave the Center and report on what the experience was like for them, so we could kind of gauge that. And learn from it.

Q. So what do you think is the most important thing that you’ve learned through your life and in your work with us that you didn’t know ten years ago?

SP: Oh gosh, if you were to ask me ten years ago what my life would look like now because of the Center I can tell you that in my wildest dreams it would not have looked like this. I just wouldn’t. Ten years ago, no. There’s so many things that I’ve learned I just can’t pinpoint them. That justice isn’t something you can touch. It’s something that you feel. I think that’s it.

Q.Here’s what I notice about you as your colleague. You have to absorb failures and successes, and what I notice about you is that you don’t steel yourself against the failures and the disappointments. You let yourself absorb them and yet you have the resiliency to keep going, to find the strength to come back and bring the positive energy that’s in you to the next case. How do you think you are able to do that?

SP: I don’t know. I believe that every cloud has a silver lining. I know that no matter how bleak the situation, there’s an answer somewhere. And no matter what it is, whether it’s solving somebody’s problem or solving something that’s not quite right within the organization, or whether it’s solving something in Community Advocacy that needs to be tweaked, you know, if it’s not working, then change it. I’m very positive. I got those traits from my mom and dad. Life’s good.

–CFJ