Dolores Carr, Personal Statement

“Like most baby boomers, my parents grew up during the Depression. My mother was a Latina. She was bilingual, and experienced the pain of discrimination in her youth. This experience helped provide her with incredible personal drive.

“She was the first in her family to graduate from high school. She worked for a time as a live-in maid for a wealthy family, and although she longed to attend college, she went through secretarial school in order to help support her family. She was a single parent to my two half-brothers.

“She moved to San Francisco during World War II, where she settled and married my father. She earned a real estate broker’s license, bought and managed several rental properties, wrote novels, and at the age of 94 received a patent for her invention of a mechanism on a wheelchair which can be maneuvered with little or no upper body strength. The legacy of her life experiences has been a powerful and motivating force in mine.

“By her example, my mother showed me the importance of being positive in the face of adversity—of fighting for the things I believe in. She taught me the benefits of hard work. And she taught me how important it is for the health of a community, to treat people fairly and justly, especially those who are disadvantaged.

“Here are some details of my life. I was born and raised in San Francisco, graduating from Lowell High School in 1971. I received an undergraduate degree in Spanish with honors from the University of California at Berkeley in 1975. In 1977, I moved to Los Angeles to attend law school.

“I earned my J.D. in 1980 from Southwestern University School of Law. During law school, I clerked for the Municipal Court and the City Attorney’s Office, where I tried two misdemeanor jury trials. After passing the bar exam, I moved back to the Bay Area, settling in San Jose in 1981.

“In San Jose, I worked in private practice at the firm of Mesirow, Fink and Lempert. When I was hired as a Deputy District Attorney in 1985, my son was just a year old. At that time I was one of a handful of women lawyers in the office who had small children, and balanced raising them with handling serious cases.

"I married again in 1991 to John Carr.  We settled in Almaden Valley, raised my children together, and still live there today. Our children are independent and doing well."

“The details of my professional accomplishments and my ideas about what the District Attorney’s Office could be are contained in other sections of this web site. I will say here only that I am proud of what I have accomplished. I believe that the administration of justice, fairly pursued, affects every aspect of our society. And I am respectful of the challenge of applying my skills to this task.”