For 17 years, Diane Crow has worked for the State Public Defender's Office in Carson City handling everything from trespassing to capital murder cases. On Thursday, Gov. Jim Gibbons appointed Crow to a four year term as head of the office.
Crowe, 55, succeeds the longest serving State Public Defender Steven McGuire who retired on Aug. 19 after 12 years as head of the department.
The announcement elevated Crow from interim status to the post she has been handling since August.
Not always aspiring to become an attorney, Crow spent 18 years as a medical technician in Washoe County, where she single-handedly raised her daughter, Kimberly Crow, now 29 and a Lyon County first-grade teacher.
Looking for a new career, she said, she decided at the age of 35 to go to law school with an eye toward prosecution.
"Kimberly went to class with me. At about 7 or 8 years old, she sat through contracts class," Crow recalled.
But at some point during her schooling, she said, her professors decided she needed to expand her horizons.
"In college I was very prosecution minded, and then my professors set me up with an internship with the federal public defender in Reno. I fell in love with it," she said.
She first took a position for two years with the Ely office, before moving to Carson City.
It was here in recent years that Crow helped to establish drug court, mental health court and juvenile drug courts " specialty courts that focus on treatment instead of incarceration.
"I will continue to handle the specialty courts," she said.
Overseeing a staff of seven deputy public defenders in Carson City and three in Ely, Crow won't have the time for a full court calendar. If she finds herself missing it, she can always step back into the courtroom. In 2007 the office handled 4,000 cases for indigent adults in criminal cases and indigent juveniles in juveniles court in Carson, Storey, White Pine, Lincoln and Eureka counties. There's plenty of work to go around.
This, said Crow, will be her last career.
"I've always seen this as a service oriented profession," she said. "It's just like medicine. You help people that need help."
- Contact reporter F.T. Norton at ftnorton@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1213.