Robert King, and Maureen Groppe

IndyStar

By the time Gonzalo Curiel returned to Indiana for his high school’s 40-year class reunion, he’d already made quite a name for himself.

The East Chicago native and Indiana University law graduate had become a federal prosecutor in California. He’d successfully prosecuted members of a Mexican drug cartel who sought to have him killed. He’d been appointed a Superior Court judge by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But when Curiel returned to Lake County in 2011 to reacquaint himself with members of the Bishop Noll Institute graduating class of 1971, he said very little about his achievements. Instead, Curiel exchanged stories from the old days with classmates he hadn’t seen in 40 years. He conversed eagerly with their spouses. And, like the quiet, popular boy they once knew, Curiel didn’t go out of his way to draw attention to himself.

What Trump has said about Judge Curiel

“He was very humble. All the successes he had and everything — he wasn’t the one to expound on himself,” said Judi McCarthy, a classmate who sat with Curiel that night. “He was like an old friend.”

So it has been with great surprise that McCarthy watched in recent days as Curiel — whom she knew as modest and unassuming — was lambasted by Donald Trump, the fiery presumptive Republican presidential nominee who rarely shies from the limelight.

Trump, who faces a class-action lawsuit in Curiel’s courtroom involving his now-defunct Trump University, has blistered the native Hoosier for being a “hater” and hostile toward Trump, implying that it was due to Curiel's Mexican heritage. Trump complains that Curiel rejected his motion for summary judgment in the case because Curiel “is totally biased against me.”

To people who have known Gonzalo Curiel — from high school, to law school, to the courtroom — Trump’s descriptions seem completely foreign. Interviews with an array of people who have been around Curiel describe him as affable, even-tempered and, above all, fair-minded.

Curiel helped take on drug lords

“It kind of struck me awkwardly when I saw this because I know the high ideal Gonzalo holds himself to and how fair he is,” said Pete Doherty, a high school classmate who organized the reunion. “It kind of upset me.”

The controversy has thrust the relatively obscure judge into the radioactive glow of a presidential campaign. Aside from Trump’s questions about his judgment, Trump supporters have described him as a “leftist activist” and “anti-Trump.” And they’ve questioned his professional associations with La Raza Lawyers of San Diego, a Latino bar association.

As judges are prohibited from publicly discussing pending cases, Curiel has had nothing to say about the controversy. But others in the legal community — and back home in Indiana — have been eager to come to Curiel’s defense.

Jeremy Warren, a California criminal defense lawyer who has known Curiel professionally for years, says the criticism is way off base. He said he might not always agree with the judge, but Curiel has never shown a personal ax to grind.

Michael Pancer, who initially represented a drug cartel member who threatened Curiel’s life, said it’s typical for a judge in criminal cases to be more popular for either prosecutors or defense attorneys, depending on perceptions of a judge's leanings. In Curiel’s case, both sides regard him well. “It’s just a sign of how fair he is,” Pancer said.

Even Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor and film star, took to Twitter to call Curiel “an American hero who stood up to the Mexican cartels. I was proud to appoint him when I was Gov.”

An American dream

That Curiel, 62, would face questions about his fairness because of his ethnicity comes after he stood before the IU Maurer School of Law commencement in 2014 and described a personal story that had the all-American elements of a Horatio Alger story.

“My parents were not wealthy, well-connected or even educated. ... We were made in America, using the tools of hard work and education, and opportunity open to everyone willing to earn it.”

His father, Salvador Curiel, was a native of Mexico who came to the United States to work in the 1920s and soon became a legal resident, according to Raul Curiel, Gonzalo’s brother. Salvador returned to Mexico in 1946 to marry, then came back to East Chicago with his wife, Francisca, who became a naturalized citizen. There, they started a family as he worked in the steel mills.

It was a thriving blue-collar town, and also ethnically diverse, with Mexicans, African-Americans and an assortment of immigrants from Poland, Serbia, Croatia and Lithuania.

Gonzalo, the youngest of four children, was born at an East Chicago hospital in 1953. His mother was a devout Catholic, and their family was active in the St. Patrick parish, where the children attended school. Before Gonzalo reached high school, however, his father died. And the cost of the parochial education became a greater burden. “I think it was a financial hardship,” said Greg Vega, who has been close friends with Gonzalo since the ninth grade.

Bishop Noll offered a strict Catholic school atmosphere — boys had to keep their hair short, girls had to keep their skirts long. While the boys were required to wear white shirts and ties, Gonzalo Curiel seemed to wear his uniform a little more crisply and smarter than most. “There were certain guys you knew were going someplace; they were well appointed,” Doherty said. “He was one of those guys.”

In the school’s multicultural milieu, students would follow their Polish friends home for pierogis and their Mexican friends home for tacos. Other than the food, however, kids including Curiel seemed to give little thought to their ethnicity.

“We all just mingled. We all knew each other. It just wasn’t an issue,” McCarthy said.

Much is made in today’s world of diversity, Doherty said. “Back then, it seemed like we had it figured out.”

Curiel was remembered as handsome and gentlemanly; quiet and intelligent; respectful, but with a good sense of humor.

He played football but seemed to have a greater affinity for music, playing the guitar, keyboards and even the organ. He was in a number of bands and, after graduation from Bishop Noll in 1971, his brother Raul remembers that Curiel initially hoped to study music at IU. Eventually, his brother said, “he didn’t think he was going to earn a living out of it.”

Instead, Gonzalo followed an older brother, Antonio, into law, entering the IU law school in 1976. In a class of about 100 students, he was one of a handful of Latino students. Curiel was an able student, but he also had other interests. He performed in the IU Soul Review, a rhythm and blues band. He wore his hair in a big Afro, and he caught the eyes of women he was around. “He looked like a fair-skinned African-American,” said Sherma Wise, who attended Ball State with Curiel’s girlfriend.

In late-night study groups, Curiel and classmates such as Milton Thompson would wax philosophical about how they would someday change the world. “Gonzalo was intent on going back to Lake County,” Thompson said, “and figuring out how it is he could have an impact on the murder capital of the world at the time.”

For a time, after his law school graduation in 1979, Curiel worked in a law firm in Dyer, about 12 miles south of East Chicago. But by 1986, he was lured to Southern California by the warm sun and the lingering hope of a musical career.

Even as he sometimes questioned whether the law was for him, he stuck with it. As his friend Greg Vega put it, “I guess somebody must have told him, ‘Don’t quit your day job.’ ” It wouldn't prevent him, though, from keeping a guitar in his office the rest of his career.

Throughout the 10 years he spent in private practices, Curiel had been inspired by his brother to work for a U.S. attorney, but he kept getting turned down. On his seventh try, he succeeded. Vega, who by then was a California resident himself, already worked in the southern district of California as an assistant U.S. attorney. He became U.S. attorney in 1999.

For about a decade, Curiel paid his dues in the office, eventually gaining an appointment as chief of the narcotics enforcement section. “He was hardworking. He was street smart. He resolved turf battles between the various agencies,” Vega said. “He was a leader.”

Curiel tried more than 300 cases. He went after corrupt customs inspectors who allowed cocaine to enter the country. Most notably, he managed the investigation of the Arellano Felix drug-trafficking cartel, one of the most ruthless and violent in Mexico. A multibillion-dollar operation, the cartel was responsible for more than 100 murders in the United States and Mexico. In cases against them, witnesses had a habit of disappearing. And, soon, the cartel approved a hit on Curiel.

U.S. marshals removed Curiel from his home and, for a year, Curiel lived on a naval base and in other cities for protection.

Years later, speaking about this period of his life at the IU law school commencement, he talked about the persistence needed to succeed in such a case. But he didn’t bother telling the graduates his life had been endangered.

Curiel was known as an aggressive prosecutor, and his work on drug cases and money laundering no doubt helped bring him to Schwarzenegger’s attention for the judgeship, in 2007, and for the federal bench in 2011.

The nomination to the federal bench came just months after the Bishop Noll class reunion. And for classmates who had followed his career, that was the last they had heard of Curiel until the Trump firestorm.

The comments from Trump led to sharp rebukes. Even fellow Republicans decried his criticism of Curiel. Some deemed them merely inappropriate; others said they were racist. Legal experts also were alarmed at Trump’s seeming disregard for the judicial process.

But Trump and his supporters have persisted in attacking Curiel for his membership in a professional organization for Hispanic lawyers. “He’s a member of a club or society, very strongly pro-Mexican,” Trump said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

A Trump spokeswoman cited a questionnaire Curiel filled out for his confirmation hearing that mentions “he was a La Raza lawyers association member.” She said the organization was organizing anti-Trump protesters with Mexican flags.

But on his questionnaire, Curiel listed belonging to the “La Raza Lawyers of San Diego,” which is a Latino bar association that mentors young lawyers and hands out scholarships.

The group is not affiliated with the National Council of La Raza, a civil rights group that has pushed for an overhaul of immigration laws, including a pathway to legalizing undocumented immigrants. Two nonpartisan fact-checking websites — Factcheck.org and PolitiFact.com — have said it’s inaccurate to call the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association “pro-Mexican.” The lawyers group has, according to PolitiFact, “stayed on the sidelines of the immigration debate.”

Trump’s supporters also have criticized Curiel for being part of the lawyers group’s scholarship selection committee, which in 2014 gave a scholarship to an undocumented immigrant.

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker site said the claim is misleading because the student identified himself as undocumented only after he was selected for the scholarship.

Even so, the controversies seem to have little legal relevance when it comes to Curiel’s involvement in the Trump University case.

Charles G. Geyh, a legal ethics expert at the Maurer School of Law, has written that the existing law “could not be more clear that a judge’s background provides no legal basis for seeking disqualification.”

In fact, Geyh said in an article for the New Republic that an attorney who brought such a motion could be subjected to fines, censure or discipline.

Weathering the storm

For all the noise, those who know Curiel are convinced he will come through the current controversy in good standing.

Curiel isn’t reading or watching news accounts, his friend Vega said. And considering that he was targeted for assassination by a drug cartel, Trump’s complaints aren’t likely to bother him anyway.

In San Diego, Curiel helped start a program for elementary students in poor areas that, among other things, helps them deal with bullies. For his work, Curiel was inducted into an elite club of IU law graduates. Thompson, his law school classmate and fellow member of that club, describes his friend simply as “a Hoosier and an American all the way through.”

For many of Curiel’s friends and acquaintances, what comes through most clearly are the stark differences between the Hoosier-born judge and the presidential candidate who now criticizes him.

“You couldn’t find two people with a sharper contrast,” said Warren, the California lawyer.

“Trump was born rich. Gonzalo Curiel was born to working-class parents. Trump spent his whole life trying to maintain or increase his own wealth. Curiel spent his whole life as a public servant. Trump talks about protecting the border, but Curiel has done it and in fact risked his life to do so.”

Call IndyStar reporter Robert King at (317) 444-6089. Follow him on Twitter: @RbtKing.

Gonzalo P. Curiel

Born: 1953 in East Chicago.

Position: U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of California.

Previous positions: California Superior Court judge, 2007-2012; assistant U.S. attorney, 1989-2006; attorney with Barbosa & Vera, 1986-1989; attorney with James, James & Manning, 1979-1986.

Education: Law degree from Indiana University School of Law, 1979; bachelor's degree from Indiana University, 1976.

Family: Wife and daughter.

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