Ten thousand people were helped by Inland Counties Legal Services in the last year, the nonprofit announced at its annual Advocates for Justice celebration Oct. 1.
ICLS honored Jen Okerlund, director counsel of Target’s international trade, as the volunteer of the year due to her remote work establishing their gender marker and name change clinic. They honored California University of Science and Medicine and ICLS director Deliesha Brown as having the Community Partnership of the Year due to the college students’ assistance with medical documents. Law firm Loeb & Loeb was ICLS’ Law Firm of the Year due to the number of their attorney volunteers.
The annual event was hosted in the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Arts and Culture, a place ICLS Executive Director Tessie Solorzano said was chosen in reflection of its art.
“For some of you, as you see the exhibits and you see the imagery, it resonates for you. It creates a feeling of familiarity, perhaps of the struggle that your family experienced, that you yourself have experienced. And so tonight, as we talk and you hear impactful stories, remember that together we can,” Solorzano said.
Okerlund, who lives in Minnesota, heard about ICLS at the 2022 Lavender Law conference, hosted by the National LGBT+ Bar. She began remotely planning and organizing the name change clinics for people transitioning gender.
“Before we met Jen, we helped one client, and we are very proud, because a lot of work goes into building a program that can competently serve even just one client. But after we met Jen, it was immediate. Jen jumped in to our efforts, immediately joining planning calls, mobilizing resources from across the country to support our efforts, training dozens of attorneys, coordinating virtual training sessions where we could get people from all over to be ready to help our community,” said Matthew Kugizaki, ICLS’ pro bono director.
“It is a sincere pleasure and honor to be with you tonight in this luminous space. I am beyond humbled to accept this honor, in particular, since I know ICLS has an embarrassment of riches within its volunteer ranks. I am sure any number of dedicated individuals were deservedly considered for this distinction,” Okerlund said.
The program has helped over 100 clients in court proceedings in the last year and a half, Kugizaki said.
ICLS also partnered with Colton’s California University of Science and Medicine to assist lawyers with medical research for clients facing disability hearings. The medical school was established in 2015, and is affiliated with Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. The Community Partnership Award was awarded jointly to the school and Brown, who is ICLS’s director of public benefits practice group.
“Deliesha, you have spent your entire career ensuring that people have access to healthy food, Social Security, disability benefits and other life saving programs and services that are critical to uplifting oneself out of poverty, critical to making sure that people can provide for themselves and their families. That alone is something to celebrate. But you are also an innovative legal aid provider, and together with CUSM, you built a program that leveraged the experience of medical students to review and assess medical records that are needed to advocate for clients seeking disability benefits,” Kugizaki said.
Brown began by thanking God, her family and the network of mentors at ICLS before explaining that the collaboration began simply out of frustration of not knowing how to read a graph of cardiac cycles.
“Thank you, everyone, and especially CUSM for allowing us to partner with your students. We appreciate all the hard work they put into this. This partnership is truly a success,” Brown said.
Dr. Joél Arvizo-Zavala, CUSM’s assistant dean of social mission and accountability, spoke for the school.
“What we thought was deeply missing from our curriculum was an opportunity for our medical students to understand health equity and health priorities of actual human beings by being out in the community,” Arvizo-Zavala said when explaining CUSM’s Community Health Advocacy, Navigation and enGagement Experience (CHANGE).
Twenty of Loeb & Loeb’s attorneys contributed 150 hours of service in the last year. They helped ICLS launch an Advance Health Care Directive Clinic for LGBT+ residents, which allows them to retain control over their body even if they are incapacitated.
Loeb & Loeb attorney Sasha Bass accepted the award for the firm.
Bass shared the story of a transgender woman who did not fill out an advanced health care directive form, and whose mother took over her care after she became incapacitated. The mother cut her hair, dressed her as male, changed her name, limited her boyfriend’s access, and eventually buried her in a church that she had considered abusive.
“That is a tragedy that I never want to see happen to someone, and it is a tragedy that a lot of people in our community look for in their future. It’s something that scares them and keeps them up at night. Something that is terrifying. And it does not have to be that way, because there is something that keeps that from happening, and it is a document that is less than 10 pages. It is called an advanced health care directive,” Bass said.
The form is confusing to people—but not to lawyers who can easily help people fill it out, she said. The clinic has been held four times since it was created, and has helped 20 people, Loeb said. Another clinic will be held Oct. 17.
Last year’s volunteer of the year, Brett Watson of Cozen O’Connor also spoke about ICLS’ impact on people unable to afford legal representation.
He had just taken on a case for ICLS where a teenager was abused for two years by his parents after coming out as gay. His grandparents attempted to take custody of him, but were unable to—until Watson was able to represent them. Just in the last month, the boy was placed in his grandparents’ home. It could not have happened without volunteers, he said.
“The idea that anyone can do this solo is illogical,” Watson said.
In 2023, ICLS helped 9,968 clients, including 547 people whose health care was protected, 1,301 people who were in danger of losing their housing, 62 people in abusive relationships and 234 people facing debt collection lawsuits, the nonprofit said.
