[img]1631|left|Jackie Lacey||no_popup[/img]It was predictable that on the historic occasion of her inauguration yesterday afternoon as the new County District Attorney, low-key Jackie Lacey’s entry onto a much wider stage would be shorn of the frills and trumpets that normally herald a race and gender record-shattering episode.
The occasion was auspicious.
The star, however, was classically understated.
For 60 celebratory but disciplined minutes at the Galen Center across the street from the Coliseum, the scene reflected Ms. Lacey’s genteel personality and muted style.
Banner-flaunting is antithetical to the 55-year-old Ms. Lacey. She is much more comfortable inside of a portrait frame that bespeaks tradition, stylish but old-fashioned than trendy.
If you doubted that, the well-dressed crowd of perhaps 2500 brought proof ¬ the jammed main grandstand section of the Galen Center resembled an attorneys’ convention rather than the more neighborhood-style, working-class faces that have come to dominate race barrier shattering events.
What Will You Remember?
Ms. Lacey’s 13-minute acceptance speech was “fundamental Jackie,” one admirer said, clean, tidy but unremarkable. Eschewing pyrotechnics that commonly have informed race and gender breakthroughs, she was only herself on her first day in command of the largest, busiest prosecutorial office in the land, 1,000 lawyers.
She could have given the same thanking-God-and-family talk to grammar school students whom she has instructed for several years in scarce spare time.
If Ms. Lacey were a man, she would be described as clean-cut. Who knows what a similar woman is called?
What she said yesterday will not be recorded in the history books or carved at Rushmore – it reflected her sensitive but no-nonsense office ethic. She came to work, not to perform. “I am so determined to do the right thing by the people who put me into office, the people of Los Angeles County,” Ms. Lacey said.
Her Influential Roots
Emulating the God-and-family first models of her ancestors, she spoke proudly just not loudly of her grandmother raising 14 children, of her parents fleeing the racism of the mid-century South and infusing her with moral, cultural principles that have lighted her path to this quintessential achievement.
In the month since she expectedly and impressively defeated colleague Alan Jackson, drum-beaters, in contrast to Ms. Lacey, have been vociferously proclaiming a spectacular break with tradition, since she is the first black and first woman to hold the office that dates back to 1850.
Ms. Lacey’s elevation to No. 1, however, was as inerrantly logical as a baseball player proceeding from third base to home plate.
She has spent her entire prosecutorial career in the County D.A.’s office. Never a mere face in the crowd, her achievements and manner attracted appropriate attention.
As the outgoing chief D. A. Steve Cooley, her mentor, boss and loudest cheerleader during the late campaign said at the swearing-in, Ms. Lacey has been at his side throughout the three terms and 12 years that he has been king of the legal hill. She called him “my biggest supporter outside of my family.”
Married to her high school sweetheart, David Lacey, the parents of two adult children, her biography, at a glance, may look like that of millions of black or white peers – except that through internal integrity and extraordinary strength, she has risen above them all.
