Fall — 2004

Judge Robert Thomas

SMC Student 1958-60,
Superior Court Judge

“A ‘moment’ at SMC? Oh, God. Well, this is probably meaningless, but I remember scoring the winning basket against Harbor JC with 2 seconds to play. I just have a darn warm feeling about the whole College.”

His father was SMC’s president when ‘Judge Bob’—as he’s known in his office—graduated from high school. When asked if he had a choice of where he’d spend his first two college years, Robert Thomas fairly shouts, “None! Actually, though, I had fabulous teachers. I got counseled rather carefully, as you might imagine,” he says with a laugh. “But when I joined my fraternity at UCLA, about half of us had been to community college. And we all graduated in four years, but nobody else did.”

“Kids of teachers always swear that they won’t be teachers,” says Robert. “And becoming a lawyer was always in the back of my mind.” After graduating from UCLA Law School, Judge Bob started working as a lawyer in 1966 and plied the trade for the LA City Attorney’s Office for eight years. “And then I was appointed to the Municipal Court in Santa Monica by Reagan in 1974. And then in ’82, I was elevated to Superior Court by Jerry Brown and went to Compton.” It was Compton that drove home the point in Judge Bob’s thinking of how ultimately ‘rudderless’ life can be without a sound education.

“Everybody talks about respect. And I did criminal law for so long—dealing with these gang kids—that I realized they didn’t have any. Every one of them dropped out in 10th grade, got into drugs, got aligned with a local gang.... There was very little parental control in the house; the father was gone or unknown, the mother was struggling. Those kids just didn’t see the value in education. If there was only some way to keep those kids in school…,” muses the Judge. “But one thing’s for certain: You’ve got to earn your way. You don’t just get handed the good things in life. You might have to work at crappy jobs to make your way. Sometimes that’s just what life’s all about.”

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