About Bob Geballe
Bob Geballe is a longtime journalist based near Seattle. He has written for Washington Law & Politics and Super Lawyers for two decades, as well as for other local and regional publications. He has also worked for PBS NewsHour, Frontline, and network television stations in Seattle and Boston. He is a full-time high school teacher, specializing in science and visual media. In addition, he loves to hike, garden, cook and travel, and spend increasing amounts of time with his three grandchildren.
Articles written by Bob Geballe
Above Reproach
Why James Williams came to mind when the ACLU needed someone to spearhead a major access-to-justice caseOne evening in the late fall of 1992, the phone rang at the San Vito dei Normanni Air Station in Brindisi, Italy. Capt. James Williams, on his last military assignment in the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps, picked up. “I was the only person in the base office,” says Williams, who was surprised to hear Marcella Fleming Reed, a friend from law school, on the other end. “We hadn’t talked in four years. She wanted to convince me to interview for work in Seattle.” Williams was …
The Many Lives of Janet George
The onetime blackjack dealer, pilot and prosecutor brings a lot—especially empathy—to the family law table“Wait a second, I can find it,” says Janet George, rummaging through a pile of documents on a table near her desk. She pulls out a 1977 issue of True Detective: “I’m in here.” Sure enough—three-quarters of the way through “The Tragic Revenge of the Jealous Husband” by Seattle true-crime writer Ann Rule—there she is, in a slightly blurred black-and-white photo, poring over documents with fellow prosecutor Doug Whalley at the trial of wife-killer Heinz Jager. The cutline …
The Road Less Traveled
Mark Kamitomo’s circuitous path to lawIt was 4 a.m., deep in the winter of 1985. At a road-construction camp in far northern Alberta, Mark Kamitomo, 28, pulled himself out of a deep sleep and got ready for another day driving a crew cab up and down the job site to make sure the machine operators had everything they needed. “We slept in trailers with propane heaters,” Kamitomo recalls. “Sometimes they would run out of fuel during the night. … It was 20 below. The pay was good and the food was good, but it was cold and …
To Market, to Market
How Seattle attorneys gave us even more to love about the city’s favorite shopping destinationMany cities have a beloved public market whose sights, sounds and smells are encoded in their DNA—from Paris’ Les Halles to Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. In Seattle, of course, it’s Pike Place Market, home of a good-luck bronze pig named Rachel, world-famous flying fish and the original Starbucks. This summer, the market debuts a grand expansion, dubbed MarketFront, on the site of a former parking lot west of the main market, on the tumbledown slope above the Alaskan Way Viaduct. This was …
Finding Her Voice
In kindergarten, Tana Lin was punished for not speaking English. Today, she speaks for those who have been treated unfairlyWhen Tana Lin was 3 years old, she and her family picked up their lives in emerald-green Taipei, Taiwan, and flew 7,400 miles, landing in the golden heartland of Kansas. “My parents gave up a lot,” says Lin. “All my dad’s dreams were put into his daughters.” Those dreams pretty much revolved around the sciences. “All good Asians are doctors,” she quips. “That’s what they wanted for me.” So, some 18 years later, when Lin—premed at Cornell University—announced to her …
The Great Debater
Tacoma family law attorney Laura Carlsen can parry like nobody’s businessThere’s nothing unusual about a lawyer working long hours, spending weekends poring over cases, chewing on the details of a litigation over dinner. Laura A. Carlsen takes things further. “I dream about cases,” confesses the Tacoma family law attorney. “I worry a lot about all my clients. I’m still learning to keep it all in balance.” Her passion for the law has its roots in her high school debate club. She attended Auburn High School, where her debate coach was Michael Burton, also …
Defending the Mastros
Jim Frush has always lived for high stakes—and high peaksFour words went through Jim Frush’s mind as he stood up in the King County Courthouse to deliver the prosecutor’s closing argument in a 1982 murder trial: “Going through the motions.” Thirty-two years later, sitting in the 35th-floor office of Cable, Langenbach, Kinerk & Bauer, Frush explains: “I had become the go-to guy for murders for the prosecutor’s office. But if you feel yourself bored when you are about to give a summation in a murder case, it’s time to move on. It’s …
Second-Generation Success
Intellectual property attorney Janet Kim Lin’s heritage is a source of strengthGrowing up in Federal Way, Janet Kim Lin found herself living in two different cultures. “Korean at home and American at school,” she recalls. That has turned out to be an advantage for the intellectual property attorney at K&L Gates in Seattle. “I just kind of take it in stride that people do things differently,” she says. “Especially for my practice, as things become more global and international, that really helps.” Lin initially specialized in real property and construction …
Employing Justice
Sheryl Willert defends bosses—and reminds them to play fairSheryl Willert’s journey has taken her from a segregated childhood in South Carolina to law school at Vanderbilt to a career as one of the most respected employment attorneys in Washington state—with a prestigious national award named in her honor. “When Sheryl and I were starting out,” recalls Colleen Kinerk of Cable, Langenbach, Kinerk & Bauer, “to have one female attorney [at a firm] was unusual. To have a female attorney of color was amazing. She broke a lot of glass …
Champion of Peace
The explosive case that took David Mann to the U.S. Supreme CourtPerched along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, on a sweeping bluff with a panoramic view from Vancouver Island to Mount Baker down to Mount Rainier, Port Townsend is a Realtor’s dream. Incongruously, this idyllic spot on the Olympic Peninsula, with its 19th-century lumber-baron architecture, is adjacent to a major U.S. Navy explosives storage ground. Two miles across the strait is Naval Magazine Indian Island, a weapons depot that handles munitions ranging from bullets and rocket propellant to …
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