By Lauren Schenkman
February 5, 2018
With members in all 50 states and more than 80 countries, the D.C. Bar’s Member Spotlight regularly features the people who make up our community. Read about your peers, their lives, and their work around the world.
When Small Business Administration (SBA) attorney and avid globetrotter Catalina Martinez talks about a recent trip, 她的声音充满了热情. “太棒了，”她滔滔不绝地说. “我非常非常幸运能够做到这一点.”
Martinez, who serves as district counsel for the SBA’s Washington Metropolitan Area District Office, hails from Cartagena, Colombia, 足迹遍及43个国家，令人瞠目结舌. 但这次她说的不是, say, the remote Indonesian island where she went scuba diving last year. 她说的是佛罗里达州的迈阿密.
当飓风“厄玛”袭击美国东南部时.S. 和加勒比地区, 小企业管理局在招聘员工, 尤其是说西班牙语的人, willing to go to Florida to help people apply for low-interest, 长期贷款以取代毁坏的财产. 从九月底到十一月底, Martinez traded her desk in Washington for 9 to 14 hours a day at a makeshift office on a college campus in Miami. She says the need was so great that victims of both Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria, 飓风艾玛过后不久袭击了波多黎各, 凌晨两点开始在办公室外面排队.m.
“Many times I had to take a break and go out and cry because the stories were just so sad,” says Martinez. It’s impossible for her to say which story impacted her the most. 是22岁的癌症患者损失了20美元吗,000 of his chemotherapy drug because it couldn’t be refrigerated? 那个带着孩子的家庭, when the power went out in their high-rise apartment building in Puerto Rico, 要爬上爬下24层楼梯才能找到食物?
一天，一个女人从佛罗里达群岛开车过来, where she’d left behind her condemned mobile home and all her belongings. 她所能挽救的只有她的狗和几张照片. 但马丁内斯说，这个女人很有韧性. “她说，‘它们只是一些东西 . . . 你知道吗，我们继续.’”
虽然时间很长，故事令人心碎, Martinez felt her spirits lift when she saw people “leave with some glimpse of hope.” All she had done, she says, was “speak to them in their language, and listen to them.”
It’s no surprise that Martinez finds service so fulfilling; pro bono work is what first piqued her interest in the law. Martinez had long dreamed of working for Colombia’s foreign service, but her family fled the country in 1999 due to violence and political unrest. After graduating from Florida International University with degrees in international relations and economics, Martinez followed a friend’s example and began working as a paralegal in D.C.
一开始，这只是一份工作. 然后她去帮一个澳博app处理一个公益案件. 中产阶级化改变了这座城市, landlords seeking to empty apartments to fill them with wealthier tenants were trying to oust low-income residents—some of them immigrants—by any means possible, 包括雇人冒充移民局官员. Helping her employer change the lives of these tenants by representing them pro bono, Martinez felt “inspired.” She entered law school, graduating from American University Washington College of Law in 2009.
作为一名澳博app，服务是马丁内斯日常工作的重要组成部分. She coordinates the SBA’s pro bono program* and volunteers twice a year at the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center’s Advice & Referral Clinic. Since 2009, 她参与了11个公益案件, several of them housing cases placed with her through the Center’s Advocacy & Justice Clinic. “I love being able to represent people who don’t believe they have a voice,” she says.
She has seen that tenants who feel powerless put up with shocking conditions, 从老鼠和蟑螂到没有窗户和暖气. One woman Martinez represented was being evicted for not paying rent after her landlord had refused to fix a number of housing code violations, 包括霉菌和霉, vermin, 屋顶和水管漏水, among others. Martinez helped file a counterclaim against the landlord, who was ordered to get the apartment fixed. The woman, who had spent a year homeless before moving into the apartment, was elated.
On a visit to different tenant, Martinez stepped into a basement flooded with sewage. “我想我把那些鞋子扔了，”她挖苦地说. 但她说，去客户家里拜访是很有必要的. “You really feel what they’re going through if you see the conditions they’re forced to live in.”
马丁内斯最近的案子是通过 住房辩护权项目, in which she was partnered for mentorship with the Pro Bono Center. A disabled elderly woman was being evicted after her subsidy provider, the D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA), had stopped paying its portion of the rent due to housing code violations, including bedbugs, 前门的锁坏了, and insufficient heat. Martinez was able to get the landlord to fix the apartment so that DCHA would continue paying, 老妇人被免除了拖欠房租的责任. Now Martinez is going above and beyond and helping her find a better place to live.
尽管她有一份全职工作，还有无偿的案子, Martinez is looking forward to adding more countries to her list in 2018. But her real resolution is to help other lawyers discover the rewards of pro bono work. Lawyers might fear that they’ll be given a case in a field they don’t have experience with, 但马丁内斯指出，D.C. 酒吧公益中心配对澳博app与专家导师, 以及一位来自中心的后备专家导师. Even if you’re not an expert, she says, you can have a big impact. “无论你做什么，看似微不足道，却意义重大 . . . the difference between life in the street and life in a shelter,” she says. “我们(澳博app)有很大的能力提供帮助.”
As for the extra hours? “我不认为这是更多的工作，”她说. “I truly enjoy it.”
