I grew up in Wichita, Kansas and one of my dearest childhood friends was Carrie Marcus. Sadly, sometime in junior high school she was diagnosed with an incurable cancer. At the time, I did not even know what that meant. She missed most of our senior year. Yet, when she came to school she would wear her cheerleader uniform, but I knew something was wrong. Very wrong. 

In our senior year, she parked in a handicap space. She did not have the handicap decal, probably out of pride and our school gave her a number of parking tickets.

One day in class, she was telling this to our English teacher. He told her to tell the principal and I asked if I could go and help her. 

We went to the principal and I "argued" her case. He could see that she was ill, far more than I realized or understood and agreed to waive the parking tickets. She thanked me for speaking for her and we walked slowly back to class.  It was the last time I ever saw her.

That event stuck with me in my life. Using my ability to speak on behalf of someone who could not gave me an enormous feeling of happiness in addition to knowing that I was able to help my friend.

I was always told that I would make a good lawyer. In fact no one ever told me that I would be good at anything else.  I wanted to be a professional bicycle racer, but I simply had no talent. 

I think of Carrie often and am grateful to her for being my very first client. To me, every client is Carrie Marcus and I am proud of it.