On September 23, HSRD was proud to celebrate California Rural Legal Assistance’s annual Tardeada event with our founding partner and this year’s CRLA honoree, Dan Stormer. Dan delivered poignant remarks about his own background growing up in poverty and his work as a legal aid attorney prior to founding HSRD. As Dan said, California Rural Legal Assistance is not a legal aid organization—it is a life support organization whose work saves lives every day.
We were all reminded of Dan’s enormous impact on the civil rights community during his introduction by Cindy Panuco, an HSRD alumni and currently a Commissioner on the Los Angeles Civil and Human Rights Commission. Cindy asked the audience to raise a hand if they had ever worked with Dan, worked for Dan, co-counseled a case with Dan, tried a case with Dan, or called Dan in the middle of a trial for advice. Nearly the entire crowd’s hands went up. We at HSRD are, of course, intimately familiar with Dan’s brilliance, grace, and value as an attorney and as a human being. We are privileged to be able to say: Thank you, Dan, for everything.