‘I was completely intimidated by the legal system.’

Cheryl Tomac Dempsey was the oldest of seven children. The Vista woman grew up in a very religious family with a caring but strict father who expected great things of her, including that she would become a missionary in New Guinea. But she saw great hypocrisy in her religious training and the options it presented, and she resented the fact that the choices in her life seemed to have been made for her. At the age of 18, she rebelled by running away with a “biker/hippie-type” as her first act of independence. Seven years later, she was a divorced mother of two, with little practical job experience, facing one of the biggest decisions of her life. She explained her odyssey to Times photographer Dave Gatley.

It will be three years now since I passed the bar. I took on family law and have worked primarily in that area. I’m also a divorce mediator, and I teach a six-week course on the emotional, practical and legal considerations of ending a marriage.

I’m doing this in part from my own experience with my first divorce. What I saw going on (with attorneys) was a process that was extremely destructive at times.

I had been married for seven years, and I was completely intimidated by the legal system, awed by the whole process. That was the first time I had ever been in an attorney’s office, and I was scared.

I was a woman working a minimum-wage job at a cable TV company in Escondido. Two kids and no money. Tina was 5 and Jody was going on 7, and my husband, Larry, had chosen Thanksgiving to leave. I was thinking, “How am I going to put it together?” Christmas that year was tight.

I recognized that there was no way that I could pay all the bills and keep supporting the kids. Child care was taking most of my paycheck before I ever started on any of the bills, food, rent or anything. So, I started doing process serving in the evenings. I’d finish the job at cable TV, come home and I’d put the girls in the back of the car with their pillows, blankets and books and we’d go serve people summonses and subpoenas.

I heard about a job--an attorney who needed a legal secretary--and so I went and applied for the job. I indicated to him that typing wasn’t my strong point when I did the interview. The reality was, not only did I not know anything about the legal field, I didn’t know how to type at all.

I managed to get through the interview without having to take a typing test, and he ended up hiring me. So for the next three weeks, I was still working at the cable company in the day and putting the kids in the car and serving summonses at night, and when I got home I was trying to teach myself how to type most of the night. I never did learn to type.

Fortunately, he handled a lot of criminal cases which meant he spent a lot of time in court. He needed someone who could handle the people in the office, and I was good at that. He started letting me do legal research, and that’s when I realized what I wanted to do. I liked the law.

I was 29, and I decided I wanted to try to get into law school, which took some work because I didn’t have an undergraduate degree. Everything I had taken at the Lutheran Teachers College was religious, and I didn’t have near the academic units I needed. I was able to get a letter from my college, and I finally convinced the law school of my earnestness.

I was admitted to Western State Law school as a special student in the sense that I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. I scored in the top 5% of anyone who has ever taken the entrance exam.

Back in an academic environment, I wanted A’s again, despite the fact that I was working full time and raising two children. I felt really strongly about my parenting responsibilities, but I saw very little of the kids during this time. It’s one of the things that was difficult for me.

I remember half-jokingly saying during law school that my children referred to me as Aunt Cheryl. “That mother couldn’t be our mother, she’s not around often enough to be our mother. She must be some favorite relative.” I had promised them, because I knew it was difficult for them to hang in there, that when I got through school that we’ll have time together.

There are times I’m sure that they think I lied about that. Because things didn’t get better in that respect. My time restraints are still there. The children have developed a sense of independence about them. One of the things that came across for them are some nonverbal lessons about women’s capabilities, that you really can do whatever you want--that we have those options.

My goals for the future? To continue growing. At some point when I ran off with Larry, I thought I was mature. I thought I knew what I wanted. At some point during this time span, I found out what being mature is. It’s when you finally recognized that you weren’t ever going to quit growing. I’m mature now.