FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE       
September 21, 2005      

Contact Alfredo Tryferis
Communications Specialist
206-733-5932; alfredot@wsba.org

Yakima Attorney Rafael A. Gonzales Receives WSBA Angelo Petruss Award for Lawyers in Public Service

Seattle, Washington, September 21, 2005 — The Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) announced today that Yakima attorney Rafael A. Gonzales (pictured, standing right) received the 2005 Angelo Petruss Award for Lawyers in Public Service. Named in honor of the late Angelo R. Petruss, a senior assistant attorney general who died during his term of service on the WSBA Board of Governors, the Angelo Petruss Award is given to a lawyer in government service who has made a significant contribution to the legal profession, the justice system, and the public. 2004-2005 WSBA President Ronald R. Ward presented the award to Mr. Gonzales at the WSBA's Annual Awards Dinner held September 15 at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle.

A member of the Nez Perce Nation, Mr. Gonzales was raised on the Lapwai and Yakama Indian Reservations. He joined the Marine Corps after high school, and then returned to Washington to attend college. After graduating from Central Washington University, he worked as a journalist for the Yakima Herald-Republic, Omak Chronicle, and other Northwest newspapers. He then went into corporate communications for the Colville Confederated Tribes and Sealaska Corporation of Juneau. Mr. Gonzales received a Thomas More fellowship — the first person of color to do so — and entered Gonzaga University School of Law's public-service program. He is now a public defender in Yakima.

Mr. Gonzales has served on a number of WSBA committees, including the Long-Range Strategic Planning Committee, the Washington Young Lawyers Division Equality in Practice Committee, the Professionalism Committee, and is a past co-chair of the Committee for Diversity and the Civil Rights Committee. He also served two years on the Trust and Confidence Committee of the Office of the Administrator for the Courts as the WSBA representative, and was a member of the Minority and Justice Task Force ( now the Minority and Justice Commission). Currently, he serves on the WSBA's Committee on Public Defense. In 2001 he received the WSBA's Affirmative Action Award.

Throughout his public-service career, Mr. Gonzales has been generous of time, talent, and spirit in service to the public, exemplifying the best of the legal profession.

About the WSBA
The Washington State Bar Association is an instrumentality of the state exercising a governmental function authorized by the Washington State Supreme Court to license the state's 29,200 lawyers. The WSBA both regulates lawyers under the authority of the Court and serves its members as a professional association ¯ all without public funding.

As a regulatory agency, it administers the bar admission process, including the bar exam; provides record-keeping and licensing functions; and administers the lawyer-discipline system. As a professional association, the WSBA provides continuing legal education for attorneys, in addition to numerous other educational and member-service activities.

The governance of the WSBA is vested in its 14-person Board of Governors. There are three governors from the seventh congressional district; one from each of the other eight districts; and three at-large members, one of whom represents the Young Lawyers Division. The 2005-2006 president is S. Brooke Taylor, of Port Angeles, and the 2005-2006 president-elect is Ellen Conedera Dial, of Seattle.

The board meets regularly (every six weeks) at various locations around the state, and its meetings are open to the public. Much of the work of the Bar is carried out through 23 standing committees; 24 sections; and a Young Lawyers Division, with its many committees.