Replacing Fear with Dignity and Hope

DA Summer Stephan Talks About What Inspired Her And How She Leads with Dignity and Hope

By LinDee Rochelle

At twelve years old or so, we all have dreams what our future selves might become. Firefighter, astronaut, actor, veterinarian. The list is endless.

We look forward with eagerness and anticipation, changing focus every few years, as we learn and grow. An enviable few, however, set their sights on a future and never give up.

As a youngster, San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan, read voraciously. One day she picked up a National Geographic magazine, famous for their worldwide images, and came close-up with her future.

“It was an image of girls that looked about my age,” said Summer. Something was off though. They didn’t look back at her with visions of youthful dreams. “They didn’t have a smile. They had fear across their faces and hopelessness in their eyes.

“I wanted more than anything in the world, to help them. I wanted to protect them and give them hope. I wanted them to have the life I have, of being able to feel dignity and democracy.” If she could have, she would have flown over right then, to offer a helping hand, but it wasn’t something her parents thought their young daughter should do.

“I held on to that look, though,” Summer said, “and I knew that my life would involve removing that look of fear in people’s and victims’ eyes and replacing it with dignity and hope. That’s what drove me to be a prosecutor, and using the law as a sword and shield, to protect the most vulnerable. It’s been my privilege to do that now for twenty-eight years.”

Pursuing a dream

To make her childhood dream a reality, Summer adapted the strengths she saw in her parents. Her mother is an attorney, becoming one at a time when there were very few women in the profession. “She’s an amazing woman and a great role model for me,” says Summer. And she speaks glowingly of her dad’s honesty in his travel agency that shaped her approach to others throughout her life.

Summer enrolled at UC Davis where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree, followed by her Juris Doctor from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law.

The latter is where she studied psychology, which she said, “served me really well in learning to understand people—what makes them tick and how they think—especially in jury trials. I’ve also found it helpful with victims and survivors, to understand their trauma and what they’re going through; to understand their fear.”

Before assuming the top position in 2017 to succeed the outgoing D.A., Summer served as a prosecutor with due diligence, tackling a range of cases from sex crimes to murder. She purposefully shaped her career, according to those haunting eyes she never forgot.

Not stopping at simply providing the basics of her position, Summer looks for ways to improve outcomes and identify gaps in victim services. She’s held several leadership roles, including chief of the D.A.’s North County Branch and while there, Chief of the Sex Crimes and Human Trafficking Division, a unit that she pioneered. (To her amazement, it’s been compared to the real-life version of television’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.)

Elected in 2018 and reelected in 2022, Summer has been a popular district attorney, working beyond the county and state borders to further the rights of those caught up in the worst of the county’s crimes, including human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Innovation born of necessity

Pioneering new methods and ideologies is a must to create change, which is what happened with the launch of One Safe Place, the North County Family Justice Center.

North County is home to approximately one million people who account for about a third of San Diego County’s total population. Law enforcement data from recent years, Summer explained, shows that North County residents are experiencing specific types of crime at a disproportionate rate compared to the rest of San Diego County.

“I set my priority of opening a family justice center for North County victims who had a higher rate of elder abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence, and homicides,” vowed Summer. “And since it opened on July 5th (2022), we’ve helped over 1,500 victims of crime.”

She’s well aware, however, “Any time you’re doing something new and innovative that hasn’t been done before, there is a big risk of failure.” Summer tells herself and encourages others to “just walk through it, because it’s really, really important not to let that fear turn you away from something that you know will work,” to make lives better.

Not only is Summer still motivated by the haunting eyes of young girls in National Geographic, she listens intently to the voices of San Diegans in need. “It was built with survivor input,” says Summer, of One Safe Place – the North County Family Justice Center. “We didn’t decide what they needed. They told us … and we built it around their needs. We listened.”

Part of the problem Summer’s office is tackling, is the lack of a method to calculate real-time needs, like shelter, for instance, vs. lodging availability. She asked an innovative technology nonprofit (Tech Soup) to help build a system that reduces identification of victim needs, from days to minutes, which will immediately help get them out of imminent danger.

The program will also discern if the person who requests help is a mother with children? Is it a male victim? Is it somebody who is fearful of gang violence? “It has to be a secure facility,” says Summer. “What exactly is it that we need?”

As they explore all the ways to make this a truly exciting response to humane refuge, the Shelter Connect App (a working title) strives to ensure they’re not matching an elderly victim to shelter where they need to climb up to a top bunkbed, for example. “It’s a transparency method,” explains Summer. “So you actually know what you’ve got and what you don’t have.”

There are still hurdles to clear before it’s firmly in place, but this capability will be another national first.

While the needs are at every age, Summer spotted the gap in knowledge of senior abuse. “We used to focus on just physical abuse of seniors, which is horrific. And, you know, we really reinforce our elder abuse unit to fight the physical abuse. But what we saw is that the financial economic harm is so traumatic, yet there is actually no data to tell us how much [is involved].

“So we asked all of law enforcement to feed into an elder Justice Task Force that we formed with the FBI. The cases go into what’s called a fusion center, law enforcement coordination center. What we found out—and this is shocking—of just the reported cases we had in 2022, there were 1,700 victims of economic fraud to the tune of $48 million. I want the community to know this is a number one fight for us.”

Trusting in the process of change

D.A. Summer Stephan may know the risks of change, but she also understands that change is not effected by just one person. She credits her years of close alliances with local police departments for the trust that flows between them. Her office led and paid for de-escalation training for law enforcement countywide, leading to positive changes within the ranks.

“Change requires trust,” says Summer. “Being able to say, you know, we need to do this differently … like we recently changed the strangulation protocol for domestic violence victims … we’re able to move things along quickly; we need to get this done and we get it done.” She sees that the police departments want to innovate, want to serve, and want to sacrifice, for San Diego’s communities.

Everyone views change differently, especially when paired with compassion. Some thrive on it. Some abhor it. And some think “it’s a woman’s prerogative.” Summer sees her compassion as fueling the changes that need to be made. “I think compassion is a strength, not a weakness,” says Summer.

She’s never downplayed being a woman or been untrue to herself. “I’ve never tried to talk loudly [to command a conversation] or do things to assert power,” says Summer. Which also speaks to her confidence as a woman with a family. “I think we put too much on women when we ask them to be superpowers. You have to prioritize, and at different phases in your life your priorities will be different. Never neglect the things that matter. Like your family, right?”

D.A. Stephan holds leadership positions in public safety nationally and locally, including serving as a vice-president of the National District Attorneys Association, and co-chair of the National Association of Women Judges Human Trafficking committee. Summer served on the Governor’s Task Force for High-Risk Sex Offenders and Sexually-Violent Predators.

Summer’s focus is always protecting the most vulnerable of every age, from children through seniors. “I’m very proud of San Diego. I’m proud of my team, the D.A.’s office. Everything that I say happened, is because the team I have has their heart and soul in this work.”

She reflected on her youthful dream to help people without hope, peace, and dignity. “It’s been an amazing journey, you know. I know how privileged that is because a lot of people dream, but life often makes you think you can’t actually live your dream. Others tell you in different ways that your dream is impossible. And I think for me, I just always held on to the thought, it is possible and that I’m going to keep fighting for it.”

At-A-Glance https://www.sdcda.org/ https://www.sdcda.org/office/meet-da

Union 2023 Scholarship, presented by North Island Credit Union Senior School and Community Development Officer Nancy Banuelos (left) and Therese Caballes, VP, Regional Manager. Villarreal will major in Political Science at University of California, Irvine this fall.