Roxas Law

The husband and wife legal team of Adrian G. Roxas and Sandy K. Roxas met at college. “We were study buddies,” Sandy said, and their diligence with the books led to summa cum laude and cum laude degrees, respectively, from Cal State Polytechnic University in Pomona.

Sandy was the co-founding president of the Asian Pacific American Law Student Organization at Chapman University Law School and the managing editor of the Chapman Law Journal. Adrian joined the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association at Southwestern University School of Law.

At first, their career paths diverged. While Adrian worked for 14 years as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, Sandy was a partner with sister Kaline Lam at Lam & Roxas APC, then founded Roxas Law in 2013. Adrian joined his wife at Roxas Law in 2020 as the firm’s lead trial attorney.

Together with associate attorney Troy L. Fredericksen, a trained behavioral therapist, the Roxases developed a practice that blends family law matters and civil cases in which they represent members of marginalized and underrepresented communities. “About 25 to 30 percent of the time we do pro bono victims’ rights work,” Adrian said. “Our family law billable hours pays for those cases.”

“Torrance is a very diverse community, almost 40 percent Asian-American,” said Sandy, who is Chinese American; Adrian is ethnically Filipino. “Since I was a child, I faced discrimination at school and at work. There was racism daily.”

That grew worse when the coronavirus pandemic arrived. “It was almost instant, the way anti-Asian sentiment came on,” Sandy said.

Even before COVID-19 struck, the couple took up the case of victims of the so-called “Torrance Karen,” a retired social worker named Lena Hernandez whose caught-on-camera racist rants against Asian Americans drew attention online. They represented Kayceelyn Salminao, a Filipino American whom Hernandez allegedly assaulted physically and verbally. Hernandez also allegedly attacked a Japanese American man and his two minor children and Sherry Bulseco, a Filipino American.

Until the Roxas couple got involved, there was little official response to the attacks, they said. “Our clients felt helpless and we issued a call to action because the authorities were ignoring the case, even though it went viral online,” Sandy said.

The call criticized Torrance police for minimizing Hernandez’ acts as “unfortunate incidents.”

“Finally, we heard from the Torrance city attorney, and the police arrested her,” Adrian said, speaking of Hernandez. Eventually, Hernandez was charged with misdemeanor battery and got a short jail sentence. Since then, Adrian said the firm has continued to pressure law enforcement to take hate speech and hate crimes seriously. “It’s sad that only when we get involved the tone changes,” Sandy said. Added Adrian, “We’re here to make sure that everyone has access to justice.”

In one case, they represented the victims of a man who shouted “white power” and gave a Nazi salute to a mixed-race couple during a traffic altercation. The man, Gregory Howell, got out of his pickup truck and struck the victims’ vehicle with a shovel.

“Before we got involved, it wasn’t going to even get filed,” Adrian said. “Then it was a misdemeanor vandalism charge.”

Only after further pressure did a felony assault with a hate crime allegation result, he said. People v. Howell, YA101161 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Oct. 30, 2020).

In August, Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, D.-Torrance, presented the Roxas firm with a Small Business of the Year award. And the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association named it Law Firm of the Year. A December presentation in Washington, D. C. is planned. “We were selected for these awards because of our pro bono work,” Adrian said.

— John Roemer