New county judge hits her mark

Judge Amy Lukasavitz's chambers is a work in progress. There are just a few personal touches in the office that was once the realm of fellow Carlton County Sixth Judicial District Court judge Rebekka Stumme, who moved into the chambers of retired judge Robert Macaulay.

Lukasavitz was appointed to replace Macaulay last fall. While Stumme gets the larger chambers and a personal bathroom, the newest judge smiles while sitting in the light pouring in through the large courthouse windows in Carlton. She'll gladly take on the unofficial title of junior judge. After all, she's still learning as she goes. "That's perfectly fine," she said.

There are gifts, like a gavel and law books, that she received upon her investiture in October. There are pictures of her family, husband Brian and their three now teenage boys.

And then there's the painting of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the famed Great Lakes ship that was lost at sea in 1975. It reminds her of a not so distant past, far from the prospect of a law career.

It's a bit of a startle to realize that Lukasavitz was a theater major in college and ran her own production company for a decade before switching careers. The Fitz is a reminder of one of the shows she produced, "Ten November," about the ship and its fate.

Home ties

A small seed was planted in Lukasavitz's mind when she was a teenager. She watched her aunt, Esther Tomljanovich, become a Minnesota Supreme Court justice in 1990. "It put the thought in my mind that if the theater world didn't work out, maybe this is something that I would do."

She refers to herself as a country girl, growing up outside of Nashwauk on the Iron Range. She spent a lot of time at the family farm of her grandparents near Buck Lake, the same farm her mother and aunt were raised on.

"Lots of hard work," Lukasavitz said. "I remember countless hours in the summer being outside working in the hayfields with my cousins and aunts and uncles, planting the gardens, taking care of the cattle and mending fences."

She recalled early-morning runs to the farm when calves were being born and then the cycle to the fall, for harvests and butchering.

"There was hardly a weekend when we were not up at the farm," she said. "I was driving a tractor almost before I was in kindergarten."

Later, she and her sister worked at their mother's flower shop in Nashwauk. All of the work created a mantra that continues to thrum through Lukasavitz's life.

"I grew up with a huge sense of community and how very important hard work and good neighbors were to raising a family."

She was an overachiever, attending community college in her junior year at Nashwauk-Keewatin High School. She chose to opt out of her senior year and attend the University of Minnesota Duluth to pursue theater.

On stage

She said she knew she wanted to be on a stage since the second grade, when her class performed "A Christmas Carol" and she played the ghost of Christmas Past. "I still remember my lines," she said. "I was hooked from that moment."

She graduated with a fine arts degree in 1994. She married fellow UMD theater grad Brian Lukasavitz and performed on stages in Duluth and produced shows through her company. It was at The Duluth Playhouse where she had her favorite moments of performing, as the complicated and controversial Nora Helmer in Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House."

"It was amazing to share this woman's story, to find her courage and have the support of such an amazing cast."

Her production company work led to special events for nonprofit groups, especially groups supporting women. "I was doing a lot of advocating through art," she said. "I was trying to advocate for marginalized populations. It seemed like I could be more useful in a legal context."

"And, to be honest, I couldn't get pregnant," she said. She was looking for a change and law school seemed to be calling. The day in 2003 when she got an acceptance letter to weekend courses at Hamline University's law school, she also found out she was pregnant. She gives a titter of a laugh. "As luck would have it."

For Lukasavitz, the path to her legal career isn't so unconventional.

"I actually learned so many more skills in my theater training that I've used on a day-to-day basis than I did in law school," she said. She cites the people skills and empathy needed to deal with clients and, now, people she presides over in her courtroom. She said she's also learning that you have to "be able to think on your feet," as on the stage, when answers are demanded of a judge.

The law

Lukasavitz was the first coordinator of the Duluth district's innovative DWI court, a process that looked to therapeutic responses to crime rather than punitive ones. She represented parents in child protection cases and served in the public defender's office, alongside now judge Stumme. She reveled in specialty courts dealing with drug and mental health issues and also did restorative justice work. Before being appointed by Gov. Tim Walz as judge, she was an assistant attorney in the St. Louis County Attorney's Office.

She once worked on truancy cases, which led to a philosophy on the legal system she holds today.

"One of the things I tried to do is to create relationships and be able to listen and say, 'How can we help?'" she said. She was assigned to fix truancy rates but soon found out she was sitting at tables with probation officers and social workers but no one from the schools. "So we finally got the schools to the table."

They didn't solve truancy, but she felt the issues were better processed. "Just being able to communicate between all of the parties, I think we were able to provide more services."

She would like to see the same collaboration in Carlton County. She wants to increase community engagement in the court system, especially through restorative justice options and less intimidating specialty courts that will deal with emotional child protective services cases, especially those that are framed by the Indian Child Welfare Act.

The goal is to have better results for people moving through the court system so they don't find themselves in a revolving door, she said.

"I'm excited," Lukasavitz said. "Once I understand how to do the job as a judge, I'll be able to start reaching out and creating some of those relationships and seeing what kind of programs and initiatives we can start that would improve justice outcomes and disparities. I'm here to listen to the community and see what they want."

The change

Becoming a judge has turned things for Lukasavitz, who had grown accustomed to deep advocacy work that will be curtailed now that she is a judge. But she said her empathy toward those she sees in her courtroom will be real, taken from her experience as a public defender.

"I've sat in jail cells and talked with people at their lowest point," she said. "I've been at tables where people are signing over their rights to their kids. Dark, dark moments."

And now she needs to make final decisions that deeply affect people's lives. She said she will remember what clients have told her even after they were sentenced to prison or things didn't go their way. "They would say that while the decision wasn't what they wanted, the judge heard me. They listened to me. They acknowledged me and I felt like I was heard. I felt like I was seen."

"That's what I'm trying to do," Lukasavitz said.

From farm, to stage, to the courtroom, and now the bench, the judge is thankful for the journey's twists and turns to Carlton.

"I never thought of myself as being a judge, but I sometimes think the path chooses you," she said. The rural ethic and the lessons on the stage all led her along to the "path of advocacy and then to being a judge. The path chose me and I am so thankful it did."

*******

Timeline to a judgeship

• Amy Lukasavitz grew up outside of Nashwauk on the Iron range. "I'm a country girl." She spent a lot of time working on her grandparents' farm and later at her mother's flower shop in town.

She attended Hibbing Community College as a junior at Nashwauk-Keewatin High School and opted out of her senior year to attend school at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

• She graduated with a fine arts degree in 1994, in theater with an emphasis on acting. She eventually created her own theater company that did a host of productions and included work with community groups.

• Her advocacy work with children and women got her thinking about doing more. In 2003, she applied for weekend classes at Hamline University's law school, graduating in 2007.

• Part of the idea for a career change came from the frustration of trying to start a family with her husband, Brian, a fellow theater major at UMD. "I couldn't get pregnant," she said. On the day she found she was accepted into law school, she also found out she was pregnant with what would become the first of three boys, now all teenagers.

• She was the first coordinator for the South St. Louis County DWI Court and Family Dependency Treatment Court, which takes a therapeutic approach with offenders. She was also active in restorative justice work.

• She became a public defender in St. Louis County, alongside her now fellow judge Rebekka Stumme, and an attorney for parents in CHIPS (Child in Need of Protection or Services) cases.

• Before being named the new Sixth District Court judge last October, she had been serving on the prosecutorial side as an assistant St. Louis County attorney.

- Mike Creger / Pine Knot News