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Our
Town
Retired Lawyer Dedicated To Serving Underserved Honored at Luncheon
John R. Ortega recognized
for 42 years of service in Compton
By
Allison Jean Eaton
Bulletin Staff Writer
If
there’s one thing Compton is lacking, it’s attorneys.
Very few lawyers have legal practices within the Hub City’s
limits, making affordable, local legal services a hot commodity.
And the story has been the same for decades.
It was the notion of Compton being underserved in the availability
of legal services that inspired John R. Ortega, an Iowan born to migrant
farm workers from Mexico, to open up a private law practice back in the
1970s.
Besides being one of the few attorneys, he was the only Latino lawyer
in the community at that time and had his heart set on serving those with
limited access to the services he provided. At the height of his legal
career he had four attorneys working for him in four offices strategically
stationed in underserved areas of the county.
Ortega was honored Thursday, Aug. 10 by Community Lawyers Inc. at
the nonprofit organization’s inaugural luncheon. About 40 people — friends,
family and former associates and employees — gathered at a local
restaurant to commemorate the retired attorney’s dedication to serving
the Compton community.
He believed that everyone, no matter what, deserves their day in
court.
The bulk of his work, though he didn’t specialize in any particular
area of law, fell into the categories of divorce and discrimination, he
said.
Probably what Ortega is most well known for is his part in representing
Spanish-speaking families in a legal tiff with the Compton Unified School
District regarding bilingual education.
“I trained the little ones how picket and raise Hell and call in
the news media, and that worked,” the retired attorney said. “There
was a lot of discrimination. I was furious from what I saw.”
Coming to Compton
He chose to root himself and his family in Compton, Ortega said,
because he had passed through the Hub City before being shipped overseas
to fight in the Korean War. “I thought it was a beautiful, beautiful
town. It had a fine reputation.”
The fourth of 10 children, Ortega’s parents came to the United States
in 1927 to work on a farm in the Hawkeye State. He dropped out of high
school in 1953 to join the military and fight in the Korean War. The next
year he would marry his wife of 56 years, Charlotte.
In 1964, the Ortegas moved to Compton amid the early stages of the “white
flight” phenomena. The social trend would soon be exacerbated by
the 1965 Watts Riots and eventually led to Compton’s having one of
the highest populations of blacks — over 90 percent — in the
country during the early ’70s.
Roger LeClair, a longtime Compton resident and Ortega’s barber for
more than four decades, described during his roast of Ortega his experience
with white flight.
“A couple of blacks moved in and 28 blocks emptied out,” LeClair
said. Ortega added that he remembers houses abandoned by whites selling
for as
low as $1.
For his first seven years in Compton, Ortega served the community
as a social worker employed by the Welfare Department. During his last
year there he enrolled in law school.
“I worked here for seven years, and I knew it was a poor community
with a lot of troubles,” Ortega said, explaining his desire to become
an attorney and give people their day in court. He wanted to represent
those who were abused and discriminated against.
It was Ortega’s calling.
Admitted to the California State Bar in 1971, Ortega one year later
opened the doors to his first legal practice in Compton.
“I finally found some guinea pigs to let me try their cases,” he
joked. “The
trouble was,” he continued on a more serious note, “there were
hundreds and hundreds of people who needed legal representation,
and I was up to my ears in cases. I was needed.”
And such was the span of Ortega’s career. According to former employees,
he was tireless and rarely ever turned a case down, often doing pro bono
work for those who could not afford his services. And he was especially
partial to those who were turned down by every other attorney they solicited.
Martha Mata, a paralegal who started her career in the legal field
as Ortega’s legal secretary, recalled incidents exemplary of what
she described as Ortega’s “big heart.”
“This man’s heart is so big for the underprivileged,” she
said with emotion. “He had a grandson who had a handicap. And one
day an African-American woman who was handicapped came in” who had
been to a number of other attorneys but could not get anyone to represent
her.
Mata said she thought it probably wasn’t the best case for Ortega
to take.
But he insisted on representing the woman. When Mata asked him why,
Ortega’s reply to her was, “Because nobody believes her, and
because she has a handicap. My grandson has a handicap, and what if he
needs help and nobody will represent him?”
She also detailed the annual Christmas parties Ortega throws for
local, disadvantaged children at his Compton office, which he continues
to do despite his May 2002 retirement.
Another former legal secretary, Gloria Herrera, concurred with Mata’s
sentiments.
“He’d have court appearances all over the county,” she
said. “And
then he’d come back to the office to a waiting room full of people.
“He very rarely turned anything down and generally the ones that
he took were just lots of work. He didn’t charge [clients] very much,
and you know, he had a heart of gold — he just took them all.”
During one point in his career he considered moving his practice
to Bixby Knolls, an affluent neighborhood in Long Beach. But he just couldn’t
do it.
“People knew me and appreciated me, and that’s why I stayed.”
Continuing the Legacy
Even upon his retirement, Ortega was so concerned about the people
of Compton and how his departure might deprive the community of much-needed
legal services that he refused to close his doors until he could find another
attorney to take over his practice.
He even sent out letters to attorneys in the area urging them to
consider filling his shoes.
Luz Herrera, a Community Lawyers board member, was one of those attorneys.
“Salvador Alva, who was one of my mentors as well, introduced me
to John Ortega when Mr. Ortega was looking for someone to fill in his big
shoes in Compton,” she said.
“He sent out all these letters...saying ‘I have 400 square
feet in Compton. You should come, and the people here need you.’ It
was literally like three sentences.”
In the end, Luz, fairly fresh out of law school, would be that attorney
to, as she describes it, “take the plunge” and assume Ortega’s
role in the community.
And for Luz the fit was near perfect.
“I went to law school because I wanted to help people like my parents,
people like my neighbors, like the folks I grew up with at the swap
meet where we were selling things. Those are the folks that I wanted to
help.
“The opportunity to work in a community where there is a huge need,
and also to fulfill personal needs in terms of personal satisfaction
when it comes to helping others is something that Mr. Ortega... provided
an
opportunity for me to do and to continue some of the work that he’s
done.”
When Luz, who currently teaches at Harvard, had to leave, she turned
the reigns of Ortega’s practice over to Vanessa Alvarado, another
young attorney who eventually handed them off to the attorney currently
practicing out of Ortega’s office, Araceli Lerma. Both Alvarado and
Lerma are also on Community Lawyers’ Board of Directors.
The mission of Compton-based Community Lawyers Inc., which was launched
three years ago and just last year became incorporated, is to urge lawyers
to forego the six-figure salary they can obtain working for large firms
and instead open up community-based practices in underserved areas like
Compton.
Through scholarships, internships and externships, the nonprofit
promotes the idea of making America’s legal system accessible to
working-class and middle-class Americans via mentoring a cadre of lawyers
committed to community service. For more information on Community Lawyers,
visit www.community-lawyers.org.
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