My decision to become a lawyer occurred on June 5, 1968, the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. I was in the Ambassador Hotel’s lower ballroom waiting for Bobby to address supporters. To my right, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, was another political icon, Caesar Chavez.

When a somber campaign official announced that Bobby had been shot in a hotel kitchen and was in unknown condition, Utter pandemonium broke out. People screamed, many cried balefully, and a pall of despair settled over the room. I was frozen in place, unsure what anyone does in such circumstances. I was not alone in that estimation. Caesar was frozen; the blood drained from his face.

It was not possible to tell what he was he thinking and his body betrayed no clues. Immobile, eyes focused elsewhere, he neither wept nor cursed which made me afraid.

The people Chavez was with had scattered and he was abandoned to grieve, pray, or distance himself.

I stayed next to him until some people finally came and led him away. I never spoke a word to him and he never so much as looked at me. It was undeniably one of the worst moments of both our lives. For me because it was a death of hope. Chavez had his own pain quotient for it was well-known they were friends and fellow crusaders for humanity.

The night blurred before I stumbled out a side door, unable to take the din and to keep from throwing up. On the way out, a dark-haired girl in a polka dot dress darted out a tall glass door near the one I had exited. She became just one of the enduing images of the sequence.

What occurred to me was that it would take the efforts of many people to replace the work RFK was planning to do. At that moment ,I decided to become one of those people and resolved to study law.