Andrew Valdez
American judge
Andrew A. Valdez (born October 17, 1951) is a Utah Third District Juvenile Court judge for Salt Lake County, Utah.
Valdez was born in Northern New Mexico and then migrated to Utah where he was educated in the Utah public school system before attending the University of Utah and later the S.J. Quinney College of Law. After being admitted to the Utah bar, Valdez was a public defender for two years before becoming a part of the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG corps) where Valdez spent three and a half years in Central Europe. When Valdez returned home from the JAG Corps he once again resumed his position as trial counsel with the Legal Defenders Association Felony and Homicide Division. Valdez spent 9 years working as a public defender and in 1993 he was appointed a Third District Juvenile Court Judge by then Governor Michael O. Leavitt.
Early life
Valdez was born in Northern New Mexico to Victor Valdez and Jeanie Sanchez. Valdez and his 3 siblings migrated to Utah in 1954 where his parents were determined to find financially stable work. As a boy Valdez worked as a shoe-shiner and eventually began selling papers when he was eight years old on the corner of Main Street and 200 South in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a boy Valdez knew he wanted to be a lawyer, while selling papers he was always impressed by lawyer's demeanor and their dress attire. When Andrew Valdez was 10 years old he met a man named Jack Keller who subsequently changed Valdez and his life's direction.
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This entry incorporates text from “Andrew Valdez” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.