RACHEL JOHNSON
News Assistant
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo visited Pepperdine’s Law School on Monday and spoke of his career path and his plans for the future. He stressed giving back to the community through service in an occupation, a topic close to his heart.
Law School Dean Ken Starr introduced Delgadillo and said that his commitment to service parallels Pepperdine’s mission statement.
“We lift up values of service as part of our culture here,” Starr said in his introduction speech. “He felt called to lead a life of sacrificial public service.”
Students related to Delgadillo’s message.
“His presentation was important because Pepperdine’s mission focuses on service,” said Monique L. Lee, a third year law student. “What Delgadillo is talking about is giving back to your community.”
Delgadillo grew up Highland Park and through hard work he succeeded in school. He attended Harvard for his undergraduate work in psychology and social relations and proceeded to Columbia for his law degree.
After graduation, Delgadillo returned to the Los Angeles area. He was an entertainment lawyer for O’Melveny and Meyers, a prominent international law firm. After he witnessed the 1992 riots, he felt called to a life of service outside of the corporate world.
His next job was at Rebuild L.A., a non-profit organization that was founded after the riots. Delgadillo’s job was to restore economic vitality in the area, and he worked with investors in hopes that the funds they would provide would give people jobs and educational opportunities.
But investors continually declined to help in the project after they visited the neighborhoods and realized how gang-infested and violence-ridden they were, he said.
Delgadillo decided it was time to do something and ran for city attorney and was elected in 2001.
At that time, there were 57,000 gang members in L.A, he said. When he took office, Delgadillo implemented a four-step plan to eliminate gang membership. The steps included: building partnership with other agencies to prevent gang growth, raising teen awareness, creating and enforcing legislation on gang violence and bringing civil suits against members for damages made during violent interactions.
After the program was established, gang membership decreased to 39,000. Though gangs are on the rise throughout the nation, Delgadillo said that California is the only place in the United States where gang membership is on the decline.
When Delgadillo was re-elected to office in 2005 after an unopposed election, his next challenge was tackling poverty. He created a commission to work on Skid Row to aid homeless people who needed to make cases against government institutions.
His current project is environmental justice. He is working to reduce toxins and pollutants that go unregulated in poor sections of Los Angeles. He said that the rates of people contracting diseases from polluted air or water are substantially higher in poor neighborhoods than in wealthy ones.
Delgadillo advocated taking an aggressive approach to ending the problems society faces today. He stressed the importance of working together to create a safer environment for future generations.
“Bigotry, apathy and hate are always standing by to turn back the clock [on our progress],” he said. “We can sit around complacently and let them take the fight to us or we can take the fight to them. Let’s take ‘em out so we can live in a much better place.”
04-05-2007