As the black drape covering the portrait was tugged, there arose an audible ripple, a fear that pulling too hard could bring down what it was concealing and what several hundred people had come to witness. But with a tender touch by the subject herself, it fell like gossamer, displaying the almost perfect likeness of Federal Judge Christine Arguello.
The portrait which will hang alongside Arguello’s distinguished predecessors at Denver’s Federal Courthouse, shows the placid expression of a woman who has done her job. But the softness in her eyes belies the story, the pioneering path that began so unassumingly so many years before.
Always inquisitive, curious and precocious, Arguello somehow knew Buena Vista was her home but could never be her world. She also knew that despite her family’s modest reality, especially in a town where the term minority was not yet part of the lexicon, but a regular part of its fabric, she would have to forge her own path.
Luckily, she had teachers who could recognize not just her talent but mine it for all of its amazing possibilities.
“A magazine,” said Arguello, “changed my life.” The magazine was in a library visit she had taken with a friend. In it was an article about a lawyer. As she read it, she discerned that attorneys were skilled with the same traits that came so naturally to her, arguing, questioning and winning. “That day I decided I was going to be a lawyer. I could change the world.”
In school, Arguello recalled being ‘a joiner.’ “I joined everything,” she said. She was in all the school’s clubs, first clarinet in the band, she was as involved with school as anyone could be. Of course, her involvement was as much subterfuge as it was school spirit.
“My dad was so strict,” she chuckled, that being involved with school activities was a ready excuse to get out of the house. His rules also precluded any dating, an issue quickly solved once she got to the University of Colorado, where she went on full scholarship.
“I met Ron the first week of college,” she said, a slight but audible pause in her voice. “We got married four months later,” perhaps not the plan her father had envisioned for his daughter. But Ron, whose name—Arguello—she still carries, was as right for her as she was right for him.
Arguello said her then teenaged husband and soulmate was unlike anyone she’d ever known. “He cooked for himself, washed and ironed his own clothes,” and was as domestic as he was supportive, she said. He was, to her, both a cheerleader and “my shrink.” Arguello said when things got dark, “he would let me mope for one day,” and then say ‘Stop!’ “Go back out there and fight.”
Law school for Arguello was not an immediate option. Her degree was in Elementary Education, and she had a job offer to teach in Lafayette but then Harvard, the only law school she had ever dreamed of or applied to, came calling and she and Ron packed up and headed for Cambridge. Her selection—one among many firsts—marked her as the first Colorado Latina to go to Harvard Law School.
Being a ‘first,’ has become part of the tapestry woven into Arguello’s professional life. Among the many firsts include, of course, Harvard; First Latina elected to the Colorado Springs District 11 School Board (1987); First Latina to make partner in one of Denver’s ‘Big Four’ law firms (1988); First Latina to serve as Chief Deputy Attorney General in Colorado (2000); First Latina Federal Judge in Colorado (2008). Arguello is quick to acknowledge that her appointment to the federal bench was ushered in by then U.S. Senator now U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar.
While these achievements would serve as elevation to any judicial pantheon, there are more. A few include her selection to the Colorado Latino Hall of Fame; the George Norlin Outstanding Alumni Award CU-Boulder; the Judge Wiley Daniel Lifetime Achievement Award; Latina Judge of the Year from the Hispanic National Bar Association.
Knowing the realities and challenges young Latinas face, Arguello has also started an organization she named ‘Yes We Can,’ a law school pipeline that offers mentoring for college students interested in careers in law. She calls it a program “to level the playing field and assist the students in gaining acceptance into the law school of their choice.”
At the unveiling of her official portrait, Arguello was both modest and inspirational. She acknowledged friends and family, noting that despite neither of her parents finishing high school, both always reinforced their belief in her and the dreams and goals she had. She also told of the two teachers, one elementary, the other high school, who saw special qualities in her, believed in her and nurtured her.
Arguello’s drive was waylaid in 2018 when her ‘forever,’ Ron, died suddenly on Christmas Day. The shock, the loss left her unmoored for the first time in the 45 years they shared together.
While she dutifully returned to work two weeks later, plunging herself into the many cases that awaited, she was wounded. While work, in itself was cathartic, it did not fill the hole in her heart. Therapy helped. So, too, did COVID, in its own unexpected way.
“It was the first time I didn’t have to worry about this huge docket.” It also gave her time to reassemble her life. “I decided I would live as long as I could and make sure my children and grandchildren” would be alright. She also started meditating and working out. “I needed to make sure we could all move through it.”
Arguello’s portrait now hangs alongside legends of the Colorado federal bench. There, she said, young girls, especially Latinas, can look into the eyes of a woman who, as a young girl, achieved a dream once thought to be a light year beyond her reach.
The artist commissioned for the piece is Colorado resident Monique Crine. Ms. Crine is known nationally for her amazing work including her portrait of the late Colorado federal Judge Wiley Daniel that also hangs in the Denver courthouse.
