Attorney’s Friends Pay Back Her Kindness--With Interest

Nina West is propped up in her hospital bed, a catheter poking from her chest, wire-rimmed glasses resting on her nose and funky looking fuzz sprouting from her head.

She’s an attorney, but she figures she could pass for a Chia pet now. I think the look is more skinhead myself, except that I don’t see any tattoos.

Nina’s breast cancer has spread to her liver, which is why she’s holed up in St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, but to her, that’s just one of those things: unfortunate, too bad and nothing to keep beating herself up about.

Her “why me?” phase didn’t last long simply because there is no answer to that question, and this is not a woman who likes to waste her time--which, incidentally, she bills at $180 an hour on the job.

“My ego is not wrapped up in my breasts,” she says of her bilateral mastectomy two years ago. “They took some things off and that was it.”

But let me theorize that if this 53-year-old mother does have an ego, perhaps it should be wrapped up in her friends. She has many, and of all kinds. The reason for this is clear.

Nina West is a giver, a fighter, and almost incessantly upbeat. She’s one of that rare breed who seems always able to make time, somehow, for everybody else. She cares, a lot.

So now her friends are paying her back, with interest, it seems.

“I honestly can’t tell you what it felt like to run into somebody in the parking lot who hands you a list of 50 people willing to work your practice and send you the money,” she says. “I’m absolutely overwhelmed.”

Nina is talking about her colleagues in family law, many of whom bill their time at $250 an hour, by the way. They’ve agreed to take Nina’s clients, and any new referrals, and charge her lower fees. All money will go to Nina, as if she had worked the case herself.

Nina, who has been practicing law since 1975 after teaching and counseling children in inner-city Los Angeles, says her practice is “not for rich people.” Attorney Barry Greene , a friend of 17 years, says Nina often “forgets” to bill clients for her time.

“She is one of the worst business people around,” he says. “Her heart comes before her pocketbook.”

Nina’s friends and colleagues say their gift of paid sick leave is open-ended. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Law school isn’t necessary to understand the nuances of that rule.

When Nina’s doctors told her that an autologous bone marrow transplant was her best hope for leading a normal life--a painful, five-month ordeal if all goes well--her friends wanted to make sure her law practice didn’t die.

Nina was worried about her clients--she has between 30 and 40 active cases at any one time--but her new cancer diagnosis came so suddenly, she hadn’t yet made firm contingency plans.

“Last year, they did a needle biopsy of my liver and the sample came back OK,” she says. “So a friend came over with a bottle of Dom Perignon and we toasted my liver--a little prematurely, I guess.”

Then at a luncheon of the family law section of the Orange County Bar Assn., Nina was asked to give an update of her condition. She told the gathering that she figured on taking a few months off.

That’s when her friends hatched their plans, and the momentum spread by word of mouth. Just because.

“It’s the human thing,” says Dan Boehm, the president-elect of the family law bar who has organized the endeavor, including blood donations. “She’s been there for other people. What goes around comes around.”

“She is inspirational to everybody,” says attorney Carolyn Green. “People are just amazed at Nina. She is so willing to share. She values friendship more than anyone in the world.”

At the courthouse, meantime, judges and commissioners have given Nina’s cases priority, a clerk volunteered to process her paperwork, and a former client does filing at her office in Orange. Nina said the list of supporters, which includes her son, her neighbors and many other friends, goes on.

“Maybe I’ll start going back to work in February,” she says. “Although, I generally take a ski vacation with my friends at the end of February. Maybe I’ll do that, and then come back.”

With that, Nina scrunches up her eyes and smiles wide. It’s definitely not a Chia look. I would say it’s more like a pixie. This is a woman who sprinkles a lot of magic dust around.