"We Are Called", 1218 COBJ, Vol. 47, No. 11 Pg. 24
| Author | By MONICA M. MARQUEZ, J. |
| Position | Vol. 47, 11 [Page 24] |
YOU BE THE JUDGE
By MONICA M. MARQUEZ, J.
This series explores what it means to be a judge or justice at various levels of the state court system. Authors share their personal journeys to the bench and help others navigate their way to a judgeship.
If you've been following this series over the past year, then you are already familiar with the wonderful stories shared by Judge Cynthia Mares (Aurora Municipal Court),1 Judge Kara Cayce (administrative law judge),2 Judge Chelsea Malone (Denver County Court),3 Judge Lance Timbreza (Mesa County District Court),4 and Judge Karen Ashby (Colorado Court of Appeals),5 describing their personal journeys to the bench. When Justice William Hood and I began working with Karen Hester at the Center for Legal Inclusiveness to create this series, our goal was to encourage students and attorneys from underrepresented communities to become judges.6 Like my predecessors in this series, I will share my personal journey to the bench, describe life on the Colorado Supreme Court, and offer my thoughts about the application process based on my earlier experiences as a nominating commission member and the dozens of nominating commission meetings I have facilitated around the state as an ex officio chair.
Western Slope Kid
I grew up in Grand Junction, and my childhood experiences instilled a deep love for the outdoors and the small-town way of life in Western Colorado. My younger sister Christine and I played Grand Mesa Little League Softball, and I spent a couple of summers in high school and college driving a tractor and picking peaches in Palisade. We spent countless weekends fishing, hiking, camping, backpacking, skiing, and snowshoeing with our parents on the Grand Mesa and in the mountains around the cabin we built near Silver Jack Reservoir south of Cimarron.
My father, Jose Deciderio Lorenzo Marquez, was born in Las Mesitas, near Antonito in the San Luis Valley, where la familia Marquez has farmed and ranched for several generations. Dad joined the seminary straight out of high school and became a Benedictine monk for several years, but (lucky for me and Christine) "Brother Aloysius" eventually left monastic life. He entered Air Force Officer Training School during the Vietnam War and was stationed in Austin, Texas, when he married my mother, Cherry Beverage (yes, that's her name!), a school teacher who grew up in Anadarko, Oklahoma. While Dad attended law school at the University of Texas, courtesy of the Air Force, Mom worked on a master's degree in education, and both juggled school, work, and raising two toddlers.
After completing his military service as a JAG officer, Dad wanted to bring his young family back to Colorado. When he couldn't find work in the San Luis Valley, we wound up in Grand Junction. Dad landed a job with Colorado Rural Legal Services, where he counseled low-income clients. He later served as a Regional Assistant Attorney General and, after a stint in private practice, he became the first Latino district court judge in Grand Junction, and later the first Latino judge on the Colorado Court of Appeals. Along the way, he remained deeply involved in bar association and community activities, and even directed our mariachi church choir for decades. He continues his work today as a senior judge. Mom is a gifted elementary school educator who taught hundreds of children to read over the course of her 30-year career. Together, my parents taught us the importance of family, faith, humility, hard work, education, and public service.
I was not the kid who knew I wanted to be a lawyer at age 6. No way. A judge? Never crossed my mind. I wanted to be an astronaut! (Actually, I really wanted to be a Jedi knight and X-Wing fighter pilot.) But college chemistry blew up that dream (and I never did figure out how to build a light saber), so I eventually turned to other pursuits.
Roads Less Traveled
I took my first step on my winding journey to the bench as a high school sophomore, although I didn't recognize it at the time. My parents always fostered a sense of adventure in me and my sister, so I applied last-minute for a Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange scholarship to spend my junior year of high school as an exchange student in West Germany. To my parents' shock, I won the scholarship. So that summer, barely 16 years old, I stepped on a plane and suddenly found myself immersed in a new country, living with a new family, and floundering around trying to speak a strange new language. It was the scariest thing I'd ever done to that point. Everything was different: the food, the clothes, the customs.
For the first time in my life, school was really hard. I took biology, physics, chemistry, trigonometry, history, geography, literature (and even French at one point)—all auf Deutsch. It was overwhelming. I was homesick, I cried, I almost quit. My host family, the Kramers, became my saving grace. My host father connected me with a local youth band where I played trumpet, and I learned to play soccer. I was forced to develop new social skills to connect and thrive in my new environment. But slowly I made friends, and over time, I mastered the language. And I didn't quit. It was an utterly transformative year for me.
When I returned to Grand Junction a year later, I spoke such fluent German, the real German exchange students who came to my high school that year mistook me for one of their own. My family, on the other hand, hardly recognized me (who was this tubby Euro kid with a new hairdo, smoking and drinking, and spewing German slang?). I had begun to see a world beyond Colorado—and my life was forever changed.
I had more adventures abroad in college, including a stint in Berlin during the political chaos when the Wall fell, followed by a few eye-opening months in Krakow, Poland, and a trip to Moscow and Leningrad in the Soviet Union. When I graduated from Stanford armed with my degree in political science, I considered joining the Peace Corps, but discovered they really needed engineers, not social scientists, so I looked for a U.S.-based service opportunity. I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in 1991 and again, without realizing it, I took the next pivotal step in my journey to the bench.
For the next three years, I worked as an inner-city teacher and community organizer in Camden, New Jersey and West Philadelphia...
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