.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} By day, Fred Gay sees life filtered through a prosecutor’s eyes. He’s the juvenile bureau chief for the Polk County Attorney. He also helped found the Hola Center’s legal clinic in 2005, where he volunteers as an advocate for clients in desperate and dangerous situations.

Laborers, dishwashers, janitors, waitresses, farm workers, short-order cooks and minimum-wage workers pour into the Hola Center, which sits next to St. Peter’s Catholic Church at 618 E. 18th St. in Des Moines. “There is a stereotype of immigrants causing crime, but the people I see are working hard at several jobs, paying fines when they accidentally do something wrong,” Gay said. “Right now, they are just getting by financially. But eventually, I think a lot of them will become entrepreneurs and successful small business owners.”

The clinic is open the first Thursday of every month from 5 to 7 p.m. Volunteers find themselves donating far more time than that because no problem they encounter can be resolved in two hours. Attorney Carol Burdette remembers one divorce case took 400 fee-free hours of the clinic attorney’s time because the client was mentally ill.

About 15 attorneys work at each clinic, culled from a pool of about 1,000 attorneys from the Polk County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project, which Burdette coordinates. Area law students also volunteer. The clinic served about 252 clients last year, and the total attorney hours donated were estimated at a worth of at least $107,000. Gay said persuading middle-class lawyers to work at a clinic, even after a long day at their firms, was easier than anticipated.

It doesn’t take a huge success to make a difference in their lives. – Fred Gay founder, volunteer attorney Hola Center

“In a typical law office, a lawyer gets one issue and deals with it for his client,” Gay said. “At the clinic, one issue opens up roadways into every part of the client’s world. It’s exciting. It’s not dry book work.”

Gay, for example, counseled a waitress with three children who was about to be evicted. She lost her job and crises began tumbling around her like dominos. She couldn’t pay rent so she couldn’t pay a babysitter. That meant she couldn’t go job-hunting to find a job. Gay helped find referral services for day care, jobs and public transportation and persuaded the landlord to let the woman stay until she got her next paycheck.

The Hola Center is primarily funded by the Polk County Board of Supervisors and United Way. The cost of operating the entire Hola Center – including the police substation, legal clinic and visiting nurses association it contains – was $87,413 last year, according to the annual report. The Hola Center is funded by the Polk County Board of Supervisors and United Way. Total revenues are almost $159,760, including a small rental fee paid by State Farm Insurance to have a Spanish-speaking branch manager on the premises.

Gay said the excess revenue would pay for the new executive director’s salary and capital improvements to the center.

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Polk County Supervisor Robert Brownell, a Republican who represents District 1, said there was no public resistance to county funding of the Hola Center.

“Immigration is an issue that’s debated and on everyone’s mind in Iowa. But people tend to regard the Hola Center as a good resource for new immigrants, a way for them to get acclimated to Des Moines and even become citizens, rather than some sort of sanctuary for undocumented workers,” Brownell explained.

Hola clients usually arrive with small children in tow. Teenagers from St. Peter’s read the children stories while their parents get legal counseling.

“There is one rule we never break; we never ask a child to interpret for the parents,” said Penny Nichols, who takes over as Hola Center executive director on August 1. “It’s too much pressure on any child to be the family liaison with the American world, especially in situations where the kids feel like the wrong word may ruin the parents’ life.”

She winces as she recalls a child who was translating for his mother when she visited the doctor. The doctor told the child that the mother had HPVC. The confused boy mistakenly told his mom she was infected with HIV.

At 28, Nichols looks like the epitome of a blonde, middle-class Midwesterner. But she is fluent in Spanish and spent years in the trenches as a social worker.

“I got used to speaking Spanish eight hours a day,” Nichols said. “I was invited to baptisms and weddings, which may sound like small gestures, but it helped me be accepted by people who sometimes fear lawyers.”

She worries about the shortage of immigration lawyers in Central Iowa. Immigration questions are her clients’ most pervasive priority. Many clients have filed visa extension requests months ago but, due to the enormous backlog of requests, find themselves in legal limbo.

Although the clinic does not handle criminal law cases, she will have Des Moines Police Sgt. Joseph Gonzales nearby in case clients are victimized by domestic violence or consumer fraud. His office is tucked behind an Hola Center door decorated with bluebirds and yellow flowers. He works there Tuesday and Thursday afternoons with his younger brother, who is also a Des Moines police officer. Both pitch in as interpreters for the legal clinic, as long as there is no conflict of interest.

“The biggest problem we encounter is, (Latino immigrants) are so into trusting a man’s word, verbal contracts are commonplace and that blows up in their face,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve seen unscrupulous contractors who owe immigrants months of wages.”

He knows immigration is a volatile issue. When someone questions why time is spent on services for non-Americans, Gonzalez replies, “We teach our clients here the responsibilities of citizenship, not just their rights. When they come here with traffic citations, they want to know where to pay them.”

The conference room is splashed with turquoise, orange, purple and green – Jolly Rancher colors that often contradict the Hola clients’ solemn moods. A casual visitor might be surprised to see a legal clinic client in despair because the rustbucket car he bought turned out to be a ripoff.

But the car may be the man’s sole means for supporting his family through a delivery job. The lawyers know their clients often live on the brink of financial disaster. Yet Burdette, Nichols and Gay say they feel energized by the gratitude and gusto for becoming good citizens their Hola clients express.

“It doesn’t take a huge success to make a difference in their lives,” Gay explained.

Their attitudes reflect the slogan painted on the conference room wall opposite the table painted with a brightly colored global map. “To the world, you may be one person,” the slogan reads. “But to one person, you may be the world.”