Mon­day, March 19th

On the first day of the Princetern­ship, I arrived at the office at around 9 am. Since I live in the sub­urbs of Los Ange­les, each day I was able to drive to and from the L.A. City Attor­ney office, which is located in the heart of Down­town L.A. The office is under a lot of secu­rity, so I couldn’t just walk in and meet my host. After get­ting past the guards, I had to go hand in my paper­work to a sec­re­tary. The sec­re­tary looked at my paper­work and then sent me to get fin­ger­printed at an off-site loca­tion. After com­ing back, I was finally able to meet Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough ‘75, my host. She was sit­ting in her office talk­ing to Sebastien, another Prince­ton stu­dent, who would be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Princetern­ship with me.
 
Mar­cia talked to us for a cou­ple of hours in her office, telling us how she ended up where she is now. It was fas­ci­nat­ing to hear about her Prince­ton expe­ri­ence. She grew up in New Mex­ico and was one of the first Latina women to attend Prince­ton.. She recalled liv­ing in newly built Spell­man, which was so “in vogue” back then. She also told us about how Sonia Sotomayor was in the class below her, and that every­one at school had always known that Sonia would end up on the Supreme Court. After talk­ing about her life, she told us about her job. As a munic­i­pal advi­sor for the Deputy City Attor­ney, she spends a lot of time advis­ing on actions that politi­cians and var­i­ous other offi­cials should take, often regard­ing “Propo­si­tion K,” an impor­tant law in L.A.

Mar­cia then took us to lunch on Olvera Street where we ate great authen­tic Mex­i­can food and walked around the Down­town area, includ­ing beau­ti­ful Union Sta­tion. Next we went to City Hall, which is across the street from the City Attorney’s Office but con­nected to it by a bridge on the third floor. City Hall was beau­ti­ful, and we were able to go all the way to the top of the build­ing, where we could see a 360-degree view of the LA basin – it was amaz­ing! Mar­cia knows so much about the his­tory of L.A., so it was really valu­able to hear every­thing she had to say. On the way down from the top, we ran into one of Marcia’s cowork­ers, another fel­low Prince­ton alum! He grad­u­ated in ’88, and was a proud mem­ber of Tower Club.

Back in Marcia’s office, we met Phil, another of her col­leagues. His work cen­ters on intel­lec­tual prop­erty, and it was fun to talk to him about an area of law that is becom­ing increas­ingly impor­tant in the Inter­net Age. At the end of the day, Mar­cia went over the agenda for the Coun­cil Meet­ing we would be attend­ing the next day.

Tues­day, March 20th

Sil­via, fel­low Princetern Sebastien, and Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough

On Tues­day, we spent the morn­ing watch­ing the City Coun­cil Meet­ing. This hap­pens every week, and each of the City Coun­cilmem­bers of L.A. hears and approves or dis­ap­proves var­i­ous mea­sures. I was also able to sit in on a press meet­ing for the L.A. Fire Department.

 For lunch, Mar­cia took Sebastien and I to eat sushi in Lit­tle Tokyo. As we were eat­ing in Marcia’s favorite restau­rant, we ran into one of her good friends, Char­lie. Char­lie is a crim­i­nal defense attor­ney who deals with death penalty cases. He is an extremely out­go­ing man, and he loves Prince­ton because his daugh­ter went there. Char­lie told us of his expe­ri­ence grow­ing up African Amer­i­can in a poor area of Texas. Nei­ther of his par­ents had been edu­cated past ele­men­tary school in the seg­re­gated area they grew up in, so he had pushed many bar­ri­ers when he went to UCLA and later law school. Char­lie was so pas­sion­ate about his job and excited to talk to us. For the rest of the after­noon, Char­lie took us to sit in on some mur­der tri­als in the L.A. Crim­i­nal Court. This was extremely fas­ci­nat­ing. Char­lie seemed to know every­one in the court build­ing – the secu­rity guards, the lawyers, the judges, the law clerks. He intro­duced us to every­one he knew and told us about how every­thing worked in the court­rooms. I was so glad that we ran into him ear­lier that day!

Wednes­day, March 21st

On Wednes­day morn­ing, Mar­cia went over  sev­eral doc­u­ments with Sebastien and I. The doc­u­ments dealt with var­i­ous mea­sures regard­ing pub­lic projects and parks, and she explained them all to us. For lunch, Mar­cia took us to the Police Acad­emy of L.A. The Police Acad­emy is located near Dodger Sta­dium, in Elysian Park. At the Police Acad­emy there was an old-fashioned diner, where we ate a really good lunch. In the diner there were a lot of old pic­tures on the walls, which Mar­cia talked about in great detail. A lot of her pre­vi­ous work dealt with the Police Depart­ment, so she was really informed.

After lunch, Sebastien and I went back to the Crim­i­nal Court House to sit in on some other cases. We were able to see a ver­dict being issued in a mur­der trial, which was fas­ci­nat­ing. At the end of the day, Mar­cia took us to a cel­e­bra­tion for Lati­nos in the City Attorney’s Office. The cel­e­bra­tion was at the top of City Hall, where we had been on Mon­day. It was really fun to see dif­fer­ent employ­ees rec­og­nized for their hard work, and there was really good authen­tic Mex­i­can food served! It was a great end­ing to the whole experience.

Over­all, I think the Princetern­ship was really ben­e­fi­cial on both a pro­fes­sional and per­sonal level. It was really inter­est­ing to be in a pro­fes­sional law envi­ron­ment for the first time, and to see what being an “attor­ney” really entails! On a per­sonal level, it felt awe­some to meet so many Prince­ton alums, and see how Prince­ton pre­pared them and inspired them to do great things in the world. As a Los Ange­les res­i­dent, the his­tor­i­cal enrich­ment I got out of the expe­ri­ence was extremely valu­able. Mar­cia knows so much about L.A. and was so enthu­si­as­tic about telling us all she knew. I am so grate­ful for the oppor­tu­nity I was given in this Princetern­ship, and I want to thank Mar­cia and every­one else that helped me along the way!