From gravel to gavel: how a small-town orphan became a big city judge

By Liv Stecker

Spokane County District Court Judge Aimee Maurer isn’t exactly sure when her birthday is. This odd uncertainty is one of the reasons that she is so good at her job. Born in Korea, Maurer was adopted as an infant by parents who lived just outside of Portland, Oregon. After a prolonged adoption process, the infant named Park Wol Haw was placed with Keith and Deborah  Jones in December of 1974. Maurer had been left on the steps of an orphanage in Seoul in June of that year when she was only days old. (while this is true of China, Korea did not have the strict family number limits). In the 1960, less than 15 years before Maurer’s one-way trip to Oregon, international adoption was unheard of in the United States. As the Korean War drew to a close, missionary Harry Holt saw the plight of abandoned babies   in Korea. Many orphans were the result of U.S. military presence during the Korean conflict which left behind thousands of bi-racial children. In addition to building orphanages in the war-torn country, Harry Holt  lobbied for a change in US Congressional Law to allow for the adoption of children from foreign countries, of which Korea would be the frontrunner.

After hearing about the Holt adoption program through their church, the Joneses had been placed on a waiting list for a baby.  In the meantime, they adopted two young American foster boys while they waited for their baby from Korea. Before they made the top of the list, they received a call from the Holt Agency.

“I know you’re further down the list,” the Holt employee told them, “but I feel like she is meant to be with you.”

The tiny Korean girl became a part of the Oregon family who added two more adopted siblings, one more girl and another boy, into the mix before they relocated to the Colville area in the mid-1980s.

“They loved the beauty of the area, but mostly they wanted the idyllic small town American lifestyle,” Maurer says of her parents’ move across the Northwest. “They wanted an environment where they could put down roots.” The Joneses established a farm and ran a small arts-and-crafts business in an old homestead on a dirt road south of town with their five adopted children. They grew most of their own food and everybody chipped in to help with the family business.

Maurer’s father became a Precinct Committee Officer and the family became involved in the local political landscape of northern Stevens County.

“It was a big deal to see his name there on the ballot,” Maurer remembers, “It really struck me how you, as an individual, can effect change in  the community you live. ” While Maurer and her siblings were homeschooled all throughout elementary and high school, she began to voice an interest in law school after graduation. At the time, her dad told her that she was “too short to be a lawyer,” which only served to spur the compact, 5 foot, 1 inch spitfire to prove him wrong.

Maurer was married in 1996 and welcomed her first child, daughter Madeline, the following year. In 2000, following the birth of her first son Liam, she started school at Spokane Falls Community College. Maurer’s second son, Oliver was born in 2008.  “In the back of my mind I still had this desire to be a lawyer,” Maurer said of the years she spent building a new life when her marriage ended. “I wanted to be a prosecutor, and focus on domestic violence,” she said, now armed with experience that motivated her from the damage to her own marriage and the fracturing of her parent’s family under abusive circumstances. She was accepted to Gonzaga Law School in 2003, proving to her father that height was no determiner of destiny.

Maurer went on after graduation to work for the Kootenai County Public Defenders, The Washington State Court of Appeals and worked in the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Domestic Violence and DUI Units as well as working for private law firms in insurance defense and plaintiff work. The broad diversity of experience was backed by an underlying motivation for the diminutive but feisty lawyer.

“In the back of my mind I knew that someday I wanted to be a judge,” she says, “and a good judge has both civil and criminal defense and prosecutor experience. I tried to pace my career to gain well rounded experience.” In 2009 when she was working as a prosecutor, she met Joshua Maurer, a defense attorney with whom she promptly got into an argument, one that she says he claims victory in. Regardless of who won the argument, the pair was married soon after. . Maurer and her husband operated their own law firm until 2014 when the opportunity to run for judge presented itself.

“In Spokane County, an incumbent judge had not lost an election in nearly 25 years,” says Maurer, but she viewed the campaign as a full time job, motivated by one strategy learned from years of overcoming daunting obstacles: “It can be done.” Maurer is a firm believer in a perspective that she says  every political view can get behind.

“When I ran, both sides could find consensus in the fact that the system is broken.” Criminal justice accounts for 70% of the Spokane County budget. She is an advocate of reforms that will use taxpayer money wisely and efficiently. For Maurer, the answers can be found in getting back to a strong work ethic and better education. Without these, “Crime rates go up, the jails are full and costs are rising... The U.S. jail system is the number one provider of mental health services in the nation.” Maurer says. If the process of getting there wasn’t enough of a challenge for the young Judge, the job itself is no walk in the park.

“We have our challenges,” Maurer shares, “but on a daily basis, we affect people’s lives.” In addition to the daily docket, Maurer sits on committees that are working to implement reforms in the criminal justice system.  She is committed to making her community a better and stronger place, one person at a time.

In spite of the imperfections of her family: biological, adopted or otherwise, Maurer says that she was taught the value of hard work. As a single mother in law school with a non-traditional educational background, not to mention her adoption and unconventional upbringing, she is a powerful example of the potential of dedication and hard work. There are no excuses big enough to stand in the way of what you really want to do.

“You can make a difference in your community and in other people’s lives,” Maurer says, and if anybody knows, she does.