I remember Mary most from our years when Mary was an El Dorado County Superior Court commissioner hearing family law cases and I was a Placerville attorney with a large family law caseload. I didn't choose family law, but those are the people who walked through my office door on Main Street (and later on Cedar Ravine). Mary's sensitive handling of these difficult cases and clients whom we were seeing at the worst times of their lives made difficult situations much easier to handle. Mary was always both wise and compassionate. She listened with empathy to emotionally wrought men and women describing their situations. My clients and I always left Mary's courtroom feeling we had been given a fair hearing, even if we did not prevail. I was sad to see her leave the position and wished she could have been a Superior Court judge. She would have been great.
As a working mother of three children myself, I was constantly amazed at Mary's ability to combine motherhood with a difficult job as commissioner and later as a family law attorney/mediator. Seven children and a full-time career? Impossible! But Mary did it with grace and seeming ease. I don't know her children, but it appears she and Bill together raised seven highly successful children. My deepest condolences to Bill and their family. A beautiful woman whose life was extinguished far too early.