Disabled Law Student’s Tenacity Pays Off : Achievement: Five years after shots by a spurned boyfriend left her a paraplegic, Julie Alban is preparing to join the legal profession. She is also establishing a scholarship fund for the disabled.

There have been moments of despair during the last five years, when Julie Alban did not think she would make it.

Sitting in a wheelchair with a bullet in her spine, in constant and almost unbearable pain, she sometimes gave in to deep depression; her plans to become a lawyer seemed like a faint and impossible dream.

“There were many times I felt like giving up,” Alban said during a recent interview on the patio of her Dana Point home. “Times when I felt totally overwhelmed by my situation.”

The young woman did not give up, however, and the payoff comes today. In a ceremony at UC Irvine’s Bren Center, Alban, 27, will graduate from Western State University College of Law in Fullerton. At the same time, she will present a check for $10,000 to establish what may be the country’s first ongoing scholarship for law students in wheelchairs.

Once more at home on a tennis court than in a court of law, Alban, the daughter of a prominent Long Beach surgeon, plans to use her experience to help other disabled people.

“I know so many people in wheelchairs who would like to do something but don’t have the confidence,” Alban said. “Hopefully this will encourage them. The law needs more disabled people practicing it; you can’t expect to change society if you’re not in it.”

Alban’s own jarring passage to life as a paraplegic occurred June 8, 1988, when her then-boyfriend, Bradley Ackerman, entered her bedroom at 7 a.m., shot her in the back while she was sleeping and then shot himself. Alban was left paralyzed from the waist down; Ackerman sustained chest injuries from which he recovered.

The night before the attack, Alban said, she had rejected Ackerman’s proposal of marriage. During the ensuing trial, Ackerman, then 24 and a former national junior tennis champion, testified that he was disappointed by his failure to become a professional player and was depressed over huge gambling debts. He said he had taken Valium, blacked out and shot the woman he loved. After recovering from his wounds, he was convicted of attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, becoming eligible for parole in 1996.

Because of the prominence of both families, the case made national headlines. Alban is the daughter of Dr. Seymour Alban, who has run for state and national office, while Ackerman is the stepson of Daniel H. Ridder, former publisher of the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

For Julie Alban, though, the real trial began after the television lights dimmed.

“The first year was really tough,” said the young woman, who spent seven weeks in the hospital and underwent physical therapy for a year. “When I was lying in that hospital bed I thought my life was over, that I would never be happy again. It took me a long time to accept the reality (of permanent disability); to say to myself: ‘This is your life.’ ”

Among those whom she credits with helping her achieve emotional recovery, Alban said, are relatives who kept telling her that although life in a wheelchair would be different, it need not be worse.

“It really helped to read articles about disabled people who had done good things,” she said.

To help maintain her spirits during this period, Alban orchestrated a campaign that raised $25,000 in award money for disabled marathon runners. She also flew to the Bahamas to appear in a videotape promoting scuba diving for the disabled.

“There are so many changes to be made,” Alban said. “Disabled people need to be their own advocates. No one can speak for disabled people as well as one who has a disability.”

By carefully investing the $10,000 contributed by the Alban family--and the hope for other donations--the university expects to generate enough interest income to offer annual scholarships to students who use wheelchairs, university President John Monks said. The university will match whatever scholarship money is given from the Alban fund.

“The Bar needs to be open to all kinds of people,” Monks said. “We need lawyers out there whose clients, in many cases, will be people with disadvantages.”

Alban spends most of her time these days studying for the California State Bar exam, which she expects to take in July. She has received job offers from three Orange County law firms, she said, but there is one more thing that she would like to do before accepting any of them.

“I want to go scuba diving,” she said, gazing at the beach behind her house. “It’s one of the few ways in which disabled people can really get out of their wheelchairs.”