In Her Words: Anita Alvarez
Cook County State’s Attorney shares her triumphs and tribulations.
It was fall 1983. I stayed up all night writing a law school paper at the kitchen table in the second-floor apartment I shared with my mother. Mom woke up early and shook her head when she saw I was still in the same spot I’d been in when she went to sleep. After rattling pots and pans around to make breakfast, she told me she was worried: “Anna, don’t you think it would be easier if you just married a lawyer?”
As I think back on that snapshot of my life, I realize my mother could never have dreamed her youngest daughter would go on to have a rewarding career as a lawyer and become Cook County’s first female and first Latina state’s attorney.
We came from humble beginnings in Pilsen. My father, who worked as a waiter, passed away when I was 12. After that my mom found work as a seamstress to support our family. Although she didn’t have a high school diploma, my mother knew education would help her children achieve their dreams. She never stopped working to help me get through high school, college and law school.
After she passed away, I realized my mom wasn’t completely serious when she suggested I marry a lawyer – it was just her protective instincts. She was worried, and to be truthful so was I. When I received my undergrad degree at Loyola University, I became the first in my family to graduate from college. When I decided on law school, I think she secretly worried I might be pushing the envelope.
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