Famous Judge Makes a Visit

Yesterday, Judge Marilyn Milian made a visit to Wichita to speak at a satellite University location. I knew she was coming because, as as an alumn of the University, I get an e-mail with a listing of the events coming up.

I was planning to attend her speech, anyway, because I'm a fan of hers and The People's Court, but I made a proposal to my boss that I go there and get an interview with her. (She was going to be speaking about Hispanics in the media.) He agreed.

I got to the facility about 30 minutes before the event was to occur, and promptly found someone who was working the event, and asked if there was a media staging area. He said yes, and led me backstage where Judge Milian was getting ready to appear, and was talking to only about two other news outlets, both television.

I got to spend about 10 minutes talking to Judge Milian, about 8 of which was in interview form, which I recorded. She is very personable, very intelligent, very nice, and smiles a lot. She is every bit as beautiful in person as she is on television.

She responded thoroughly to every one of my questions, including questions about how she got her job, if she sees it as an opportunity to be a role model to other Latinas, etc. (She said, by the way, that that is a very cool by-product of her position, but not one that influenced her decision to take her job.) And she did so very willingly. She even recorded something for me in Spanish for the Spanish station at my workplace!

At one time during my interview with her, she said that I was asking too good of questions, because a lot of what I was asking, she was planning on talking about in her presentation!

Anyway, just before she went out on stage, she signed a T-shirt for me: "You Rule! Marilyn Milian". I thanked her for her interview and went out into the auditorium and got my sound equipment hooked up.

I tried to get pictures of her during her presentation, but she moves a lot and very quickly when she's talking. She has a lot of energy! So, here are a few pics from the back of the auditorium, where I was sitting and walking around (trying to keep a close eye on my property that I left in a chair).