SAN DIEGO COUNTY : Beneath the Yuppie Exterior Is a Man on a Legal Mission

As he strides through the auspicious halls of Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps, Timothy R. Pestotnik seems to epitomize the yuppified young associate attorney on the fast track.

He buttons power-red suspenders over a crisp white shirt. He drives a Porsche Carerra--sometimes faster than he should, friends say. He loves to blast rock ‘n’ roll music and owns a house with an ocean view in Cardiff, all the better for warp-speed Porsche trips downtown every morning.

He lunches at Rainwater’s, where all the waiters know his name. He’s 28 years old and likes to spend what little free time he has sailing, playing volleyball or working on his car. Yet on any given evening, you probably won’t find Pestotnik wining and dining potential clients, or pricing new stereo equipment.

Most likely, the young attorney will be sitting in a local hospital, helping a dying AIDS patient draft a will. Or answering legal questions for that patient’s family. Or speaking at a charity or club event about the many discrimination problems AIDS patients face, whether someone is canceling their medical insurance or refusing to rent them an apartment.

For Pestotnik, this is more than the pro bono, or free, legal work attorneys are expected to perform as part of their public duty. This is a mission.

At an age when many young lawyers living the good life in Southern California would be happy with the Porsche and the house at the beach, Pestotnik wants things money can’t buy. He wants to change things, to help people. And he has.

During his three years in San Diego, Tim Pestotnik has helped halt discrimination against victims of AIDS in San Diego. He helped write San Diego’s AIDS Anti-Discrimination Ordinance and was instrumental in winning its 7-1 passage through the City Council in February, 1987.

That law was tested last month and Pestotnik’s efforts were rewarded. A chiropractor in Hillcrest, Dr. Joseph Cicmanec, agreed to pay $5,000 for refusing to treat Robert E. Walsh, who is dying of AIDS. More important, say those in San Diego’s gay community, other AIDS patients, and Pestotnik, is the judge’s decree that the chiropractor no longer refuse to treat people with AIDS. They see the ruling as a victory over discrimination.

The legislation Pestotnik authored might have been written and passed without the attorney’s help, says longtime gay activist Rick Moore, “but it would have taken longer and it wouldn’t have been as good.”

“It’s hard to say anything about Tim that doesn’t sound unbelieveable. He is kind of unbelieveable,” says Moore, who has worked with him at the San Diego AIDS Project. “A hot shot attorney who, for personal reasons, has chosen to direct his activist energies in our direction. Thank heaven. We can use the help.”

Such adulation and influence might turn the head of a young attorney. Big egos are seldom scarce in law firms, after all. Pestotnik, however, does anything but puff himself up. Instead, he explains why he preferred settling the case rather than taking the issue to trial.

“The reason I do AIDS litigation is not to nail people to the wall,” he says, looking out his 15th-floor office window at the ships on San Diego Bay. “It is purely to prevent people from discriminating.”

Four years ago, Pestotnik’s father died of AIDS. When he learned of his father’s condition, Pestotnik immediately flew home to Colorado from Washington, D.C., where he was in his third year of law school at American University. He arrived to find an emotionally and legally complex situation.

While doctors could provide no cure and little hope, the family’s attorney was able to sort through many problems with Tim, his mother, and five brothers and sisters. His own experience with his father’s death prompted him to volunteer with the San Diego AIDS Project soon after he arrived in San Diego to start work at Luce, Forward in 1986.

He helped create the Project’s free legal clinic, is now president of the organization’s board, and does free legal work for AIDS victims and their families.

Backing his endeavors, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, is the staid downtown law firm, Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps. “I suppose it’s an issue that just naturally raises questions as to why a person or a firm would be involved with it,” admits Chuck Hellerich, the managing partner of San Diego’s oldest and second-largest law firm.

One client did question the firm’s decision to contribute its resources to Pestotnik’s campaign. But the firm didn’t back off its commitment to the cause and managed to retain the client.

Like most big law firms Luce, Forward encourages its attorneys to do legal work for worthy causes, such as helping the homeless or indigent who need legal representation. Attorneys are asked to donate 400 free hours a year, beyond the 1,850 hours they must bill to clients.

What is surprising is that a firm as old and established as Luce, Forward would commit itself to the controversies surrounding AIDS in a conservative city like San Diego. Hellerich says it was Pestotnik’s intense and persistent interest, energy and commitment to resolving the problems faced by AIDS victims that inspired he and the firm’s other partners to back Pestotnik’s cause.

“He challenges the firm, he energizes a real commitment, and that’s a positive thing . . . over the long haul, that comes back as a benefit to the firm. It underscores the firm’s dedication to the community.”

For Pestotnik, the choice to lend his time to AIDS victims grew directly out of the problems he faced when his father died.

“I wanted to use my legal training to help people with the disease, and particularly their families who were being left behind. My family was left behind, and I noticed that there were a lot of things a lawyer could do for a family at that time, that the doctors couldn’t do. The doctors kind of throw up their hands many times . . . the lawyers often can give the family and the patient a sense of dignity and a sense of control that they miss very dearly.”

Tim will answer questions about anything regarding AIDS, the laws surrounding it, and his personal views about the disease and its implications to society.

But he won’t talk about his father’s death. “That’s where I draw the line,” he says firmly. Perhaps his fervent work to help the incurably dying is a way to deal with his father’s death.

“I don’t really think it is a way to work it through,” he says. “I just saw this tremendous need. Death is something that takes a lifetime to work through. I think you think about it every now and then, but I don’t really struggle with it anymore. I think you just go on.”

Around the office, Pestotnik’s colleagues call him “Boy Wonder.” Another friend says she’s heard him referred to as “The Saint.” The latter suits the former alter boy, who speaks liberally about his Catholic upbringing, and has a wooden plaque bearing a cross tacked to the wall of his office near the door.

“My upbringing, my Christian values teach me that doing something for people in need is what I should be doing. I don’t think Jesus was kidding when he washed the feet of the lepers. I think that we all need to be doing something.”

He tries to downplay the notoriety he’s achieved through his work with the AIDS Project. If anything, he seems wide-eyed and amazed about what has happened and that he’s had a part in it at all. Although the recent settlement set legal precedent regarding how AIDS patients are treated not only in San Diego, but throughout the state, Pestotnik blanches at taking credit.

“So you’ve become an expert on this stuff?” asked one visitor recently.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You wouldn’t consider yourself an expert on all this?”

He stammers. “Well, I work in it a lot. But I don’t want to use that word to describe myself. I will tell you that others have used it frequently to describe me when I get up to talk about AIDS and the law. Because there are so few people doing this kind of work today.”

After talking with Pestotnik and listening to his friends, you start to wonder if this guy is for real. Even his friends aren’t above wondering. But the answer always comes back the same . . . in the affirmative.

“Most people in volunteer work have a hidden agenda. They want to influence policy or make social contacts. But Tim just gets genuinely moved by people who are being discriminated against and are sick. That’s his main motivation,” says Corinne McPartlin, a former member of the AIDS Project Board and close friend of Pestotnik’s.

Even at his law firm, where competition to become a partner could take a brutal form, other associates and partners admire Pestotnik’s work, according to fellow attorney Dan Lawton, who says Pestotnik is known as a “a cool litigator.” During a recent deposition, for example, a client hurled water at one of the opposing attorneys in the room.

“Tim interposed himself in that volatile situation and calmed things down,” says Lawton. “I don’t know if anyone else would have acted as calmly.”

So, if Pestotnik is a bona fide hot shot, and he could spend more time lolling on the beach, driving his Porsche and crewing on his friend’s yacht, why doesn’t he?

“We all are charged with the responsibility of our faults and our talents. And to the extent that I can try to utilize my family’s experience along with my legal training, why not try to make the world a better place?”