Lifelong Sacramentan and longtime U.S. District Judge Edward J. Garcia dies at 94

Retired U.S. District Judge Edward J. Garcia, a lifelong Sacramento resident who ascended to the federal bench after a lengthy legal career, died April 29. He was 94.

Garcia, whose 13th-floor court chambers downtown looked out over the Alkali Flat neighborhood where he grew up, retired in 2012 after a career that saw him rise from being a Sacramento prosecutor to a lifetime appointment as federal judge.

“He was the last of the giants,” said Sacramento attorney William Portanova, who first appeared before Garcia in 1982. “He was the beating heart of justice in Sacramento.”

As a federal judge, Garcia oversaw a number of high-profile cases, including the FBI’s “Shrimpscam” bribery probe in the late 1980s that led to the convictions of six political figures.

Garcia presided over the trial of two anti-government militia members who were convicted of plotting to blow up two massive propane tanks near Highway 99 and Grant Line Road, something the judge referred to as a “harebrained scheme” as he sentenced them in 2002.

And in 1984 the judge issued a ban on new construction around Lake Tahoe as part of a fight by California officials to protect North America’s largest alpine lake.

‘Best boss and mentor I ever had’

“He’s the best boss I ever had,” said U.S. Magistrate Judge Edmund F. Brennan, who clerked for Garcia beginning in 1984. “He was a very hard worker, a very good teacher, and he emphasized integrity, which is something I really admired.

“He didn’t want clerks to tell him what they thought he wanted to hear. He wanted them to do the research and let him know what the law required.”

Portanova recalled Garcia as “a no nonsense son of a gun” who had little patience for meaningless monologues by attorneys.

“He was the toughest and the least tolerant of out of town attorneys who hadn’t taken the time to figure out how we do things,” Portanova said. “He hated lawyers blabbing constantly.

“When a lawyer did that, and it was usually an out-of-town lawyer, he would say, ‘Counsel, there’s no question in front of you. Just because I stopped talking doesn’t mean it’s time for you to start talking.

“’Sometimes, I’m thinking, you see, counsel? Judges, unlike lawyers, must think before they speak.’”

Brennan echoed that, saying “so many lawyers were intimidated by him in the courtroom, but he was actually a very, very pleasant man.”

“We worked hard, and he never asked of us anything he wasn’t doing himself,” Brennan said. “If I was in chambers working late at night or on a weekend, he was right there with me.”

Garcia’s longtime clerk, Laurie Richardson, said the judge “was the hardest worker I ever knew.”

“I remember when I first started to work for him I had a goal of getting in before him in the morning, and it became very difficult to do,” Richardson said. “I would get in at 6:30, and he would already be there.”

Richardson worked with Garcia for more than 23 years, saying he attended her wedding, swore her husband into the state Bar, celebrated her children’s graduations and helped her through the deaths of her parents.

She worked two stints with the judge, leaving to work as a litigator at a law firm but returning to work for Garcia after having her first child.

“When I returned to the judge’s chambers for my second stint, he let me craft my own maternity leave policy for my second child,” she wrote in a text message to The Bee. “At the law firm, my status as a working mother was grudgingly tolerated; in chambers, it was welcomed.”

“He truly was an exceptional person, and the best boss and mentor I ever had,” she wrote.

Sacramento native grew up in Alkali Flat

Garcia was born Nov. 24, 1928, to Susano and Maria Garcia and grew up in Alkali Flat, where he and his siblings would run to meet their father, a Southern Pacific Railroad mechanic, when he got off work at the downtown Railyards.

Garcia’s chambers in the federal courthouse at Fifth and I streets gave him a view of his former neighborhood and the Railyards.

“That’s why I asked for this spot in the building,” he told The Bee in 2012 as he was preparing to retire. “Brings back a lot of memories.”

Garcia graduated from Christian Brothers High School, then served in the military in Japan following World War II before returning to Sacramento and graduating from McGeorge Law School in 1958.

He spent 10 years as a deputy district attorney before being promoted to chief deputy district attorney in 1969.

Three years later, in 1972, he was appointed by Gov. Ronald Reagan to the Sacramento Municipal Court, which later merged with Superior Court.

As president in 1984, Reagan appointed Garcia to the federal bench.

“I don’t know whether it was a political decision based on the fact I am a Mexican, or because he thought my record made me the most qualified,” Garcia told Denny Walsh, The Bee’s longtime federal courts reporter, in the 2012 interview. “Either way, I don’t think I let him down.”

Garcia was a three-sport athlete in high school and longtime softball player who continued in the sport until he was 85.

He also was a longtime San Francisco Giants fan who was known to slip out to catch a game once a year with staff and acquaintances, and a fan who had a small television in his chambers that was on whenever there might be a World Series game under way.

Garica is survived by his wife, Joanne, and their six children; daughters Linda Garcia, Aileen Ellsworth (Larry), Karen Telford (Ned), Jane Boyd (Fred); and sons, David Rice (Nita), and Rick Garcia (Brandee Mead).

Services are scheduled for May 27 at St. Mary Cemetery & Funeral Center, 6509 Fruitridge Road. Visitation begins at 1 p.m., with services at 2 p.m. followed by burial and reception at 3 p.m.