Here Comes the Judge…

By Michael M. Bowden

At noon on a sunny winter day, Stanley's Famous Hamburgers – a Central Falls institution since the 1930s – was packed with a diverse, noisy crowd of diners: men in suits negotiating on their iPhones, retirees gossiping over coffee and dessert, a young mother maneuvering her stroller between the tightly placed tables, a group of teens lingering over a leisurely school-vacation-week lunch. They had nothing obvious in common – except that they all seemed to know Alberto Cardona '04.

As Cardona made his way into the dining room, it was like old home week. A grandmotherly woman stopped to give him a hug; Cardona inquired warmly about her health, her family.  wiry young man – a local baseball star now playing for the University of Maine – stepped up and shook his hand. "That's George Taher," Cardona said, after talking stats with him for a few minutes. "I've known him since he was in Little League, he's incredible!"

He finally settled down at a table next to one of the suits. They exchanged greetings and small talk in Spanish. "This is George Ortiz," Cardona said. "He heads up Progreso Latino" – one of Rhode Island's largest community-based advocacy groups.  "Look out for this guy, he's trouble," Ortiz joked with a broad grin. In fact, Progreso Latino honored Cardona last fall – along with Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and National Public Radio news anchor Lakshmi Singh – at its 31st Annual Gala, for significant contributions to the betterment of the Latino community.

It's been a good year for Cardona. Shortly before the Progreso Latino event he was appointed associate justice of the Central Falls Municipal Court – an honor that, incidentally, also made him RWU Law's first alum to ascend to the bench.

'This Was a Thriving Community'

After lunch, Cardona offered a tour of the City of Central Falls – all 1.23 square miles of it. The community has been severely battered by the mortgage crisis; by the close of 2008, there'd been more than 150 foreclosures in the city, with the unsightly – and unsettling – result that just about every street now features at least one boarded-up house, and most have several.

Surveying a depressing vista of plywood-clad properties from the sidewalk outside Veterans Memorial Elementary School, Cardona threw up his hands. "What does this tell our kids?" he asked. "How are we going to address this issue? How do we help prevent families from losing everything? How do we prevent kids having to leave school in the middle of the school year because their families lost their homes?"

Part of the Central Fall's solution has been to establish a Municipal Housing Court dealing exclusively with such issues. As a former assistant city solicitor, a community activist and a local who knows the town inside out, Cardona was unanimously selected by the city council as the new court's first judge. Cardona didn't have to give up his law practice for the part-time position; however, he carefully keeps his bench and bar roles separate – for example, symbolically leaving his robe in the courthouse closet, refusing to take it to his home or office. "People have asked me to keep it with me so I can, say, perform marriages," he said, then added with a laugh, "but I think that would be bad karma for my divorce practice."

Presiding over the Housing Court has given Cardona what he calls a "laser-focus on housing issues" – he now regularly wrestles with zoning problems; garbage removal problems; and, increasingly, foreclosure problems – such as banks that foreclose on a mortgage but then fail to clean up and secure the abandoned property. "To board up a foreclosed house costs $10,000 to $12,000," Cardona says, describing a typical dilemma. "In some towns it's closer to $6,000 or $7,000, but here it's more because the contractor doesn't get paid outright; he only gets a lien, and has to wait for the sale. So we order the property secured and then the bank complains, 'Why should we pay so much?' But the bank has already been sent multiple notices and never responded. They never secured the property as they were required to do."

On any given day, Cardona might face issues of tenants staying over after a foreclosure, realtors refusing to maintain a property they're charged with selling, or owners who are out of state but have left no Rhode Island agent of service. On top of that, the banks themselves are overwhelmed by the sheer number of foreclosures they're processing, while facing layoffs and cutbacks of their own. So often a bank might complete a foreclosure, but then neglect to record the new deed – causing additional administrative confusion.

Workaday ordinance enforcement has also become a delicate balancing act. "We need to determine whether the rules in a given case are too cumbersome, too burdensome," Cardona said. "Do they hold homeowners to too high of a standard? "For example, should we really force someone to replace a rotten fence in this economy, when families can barely make their mortgage payments?" Similarly, in the wake of the Station Nightclub fire, the fire code burden became tremendous. We don't want to be hitting folks up for not maintaining and keeping up the property, to the extent that we end up losing them. We need to try and help them, work with them. It's a quality of life issue. This used to be a thriving community!"

'I Got Lucky'

Cardona knows the community well. Born in Puerto Rico, he spent his early childhood in a barrio in New York, never really picking up English until he was a teenager and his family settled in Central Falls. Back then, the city consisted of discreet ethnic pockets: French-Canadian, Syrian and Lebanese, Columbian, Portuguese, even Croatian enclaves that largely kept to themselves.

Today, by contrast, "everyone's mixed up," with Latinos (largely Mexican, Dominican and Puerto Rican) accounting for nearly 80 percent of the city's population. The second of six children, Cardona says he was "the runt of the litter," being of average height but dwarfed by his six-foot-plus brothers. "That's where I got my Napoleon complex," he joked.

His mother worked three jobs to support the family; she, along with one of Cardona's brothers and his only sister, still lives in Central Falls. Cardona grew up tough and streetwise, but benefited from interventions by such guardian angels as a local cop, a teacher, a city councilor – even a state senator who once walked into the teenage Cardona's home, hauled him bodily out of bed and escorted him to school on a day he'd decided to skip. All of these people, at different times, saw something worth saving in Alberto Cardona.

"I'm fortunate, I got lucky," Cardona admitted. He did his part as well, however, graduating magna cum laude from Johnson & Wales University, and later – after marriage, kids, and an extended stint in the real-estate investment business – enrolling in the evening division at RWU Law. He fondly recalled the pervasive "we're all in this together" camaraderie of his classmates, and the friendly, open-door policies of his favorite professors, including Larry Ritchie, David Zlotnick and then- Interim Dean Bruce Kogan.

After graduating and passing the bar, Cardona bought a modest single-family home across from Central Falls City Hall, with the idea of moving back to his hometown and perhaps running for mayor. His wife balked, however, and the building became his law office. But although he now lives in the comfortable suburban sprawl of West Greenwich, R.I., Cardona still considers Central Falls his true home.

"I got a lot of help as a kid, and that's the kind of help I want to give back," he said. He is giving indeed: Cardona serves on the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights, and he's coordinated housing fairs for low-income families in conjunction with agencies such as Progreso Latino, the Blackstone Valley Community Action Program and Rhode Island Housing. He wrote the grants, secured the funding and established the Central Falls Even Start Literacy Program. He serves as mentor in Central Falls Family Self-Sustainability (FSS) Program, counseling students who are considering law as a career, taking them to court proceedings and introducing them to judges. He even sponsors a Cal Ripken Youth Baseball team ("Little League is too expensive for a lot of kids around here…").

His wife Claudia, Guatemalan by birth, is also a Latino community activist, as are his brother and sister. His kids volunteer at Central Falls community service organizations.

"It gives them some perspective," Cardona explained. The eldest of his three children, Angie Cardona, is a freshman majoring in legal studies at RWU. (Another RWU undergrad, sophomore Sindy De Leon, works part-time as a receptionist at his law office.)

As he stands chatting on the sidewalk outside City Hall, Cardona is very much the local boy made good. Friends wave or call out to him from passing cars; a worker in a pickup truck pulls over to talk about a case. "The way the Latino community goes, that's the way I go," Cardona said. "If the Latino community fails, if people see it as a blight or a plague – then that's how I'll be seen too. I grew up here, so I came back here. I owe this community something. Maybe I could have done better somewhere else, but ..."

Reminded that being appointed a judge so early in one's legal career generally isn't considered a bad indicator, Cardona laughed. "Yeah, four years out of law school and already wearing a robe; I never would have dreamed it…" He paused and looked thoughtfully up at the courthouse – his courthouse. "But you know what? It's a good fit."