Kathleen Pozzi is like the mother Christopher Hohmann never had.
When the 23-year-old former foster child got in trouble for the second time, the Sonoma County public defender took up his cause, keeping him out of jail and hooking him up with a program where he could learn job skills.
The gravel-voiced attorney sold the idea to a judge, assuring that Hohmann had been coaxed back onto the right track.
“I had to smack him around to make him listen to me,” she told Judge Dana Simonds earlier this month, gesturing with her bangle-covered arm.
After 30 years in the office she now runs, Pozzi’s famously tough but maternal approach is shaping its future. Through her leadership, staff members are called on to be part mental health therapist, education counselor and housing specialist in addition to top legal adviser.
It’s all part of Pozzi’s goal to take the agency responsible for defending the county’s poor in a more holistic direction that will help address the underlying causes of crime while making up for shortfalls in the social safety net.
Soon, instead of just representing homeless clients at arraignments and bail hearings, public defenders will refer them to shelters. Rather than simply arguing over mental competence, lawyers will also direct people to specialized treatment. Need a tattoo removed? Pozzi’s attorneys know a guy.
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