30 years later, court clerk still loves her job

PALMER — Teresa Shaw didn’t grow up thinking she wanted to be a courthouse clerk.

“It never even occurred to me to work in a courthouse,” she said.

But after 30 years, she can’t imagine working anywhere else.

“It’s been a very good run and I wouldn’t change it for anything,” Shaw said.

Earlier this month, the court system threw her a party to honor that 30-year milestone. Shaw is the clerk of court in Palmer, meaning she supervises all the other clerks. That would be a staff of 35.

Shaw began her career in Anchorage in 1981. A friend had worked hard to find her a spot in the clerk’s office at the courthouse there. She and her family had moved to Alaska in 1979.

She signed on as a temporary clerk for a couple of months, taking on a permanent position in January 1982. Which is why her official 30-year mark didn’t pass until January of this year.

She came to Palmer in 1984. Back then, the court housed one judge and one magistrate. There were also seven clerks. Two positions were vacant when Shaw showed up and the state added two more. So she was one of the four who were hired to fill out Palmer’s roster of 11.

The courthouse was just half of one building on Fireweed Road in Palmer. The staff quickly outgrew that and annexed an apartment that was part of the same building. Clerks had trouble rolling their chairs over the shag carpet in the converted living room. The bathtub held stored files, Shaw recalled.

“It was nice, though, because we got a full kitchen, which you don’t usually get in a public building,” she said.

In 1988, the court system started construction on its current court building. There were three courtrooms when it was built. Two more were added in 2000 and three more in 2008. And then the state bought the old Valley Hospital building, attached it to the courthouse, and moved attorneys and other state officials into the building.

In short, Shaw has seen a whole lot of changes in her time. It’s an expansion the Valley’s population has mirrored.

“I swear you could blink your eye and there’d be a new building,” she said of the construction boom out here.

With that has come an increase in the number of cases clerks have to field. Lately, the volume of cases seems to have slowed. It’s still rising, but not as quickly.

She recalled a year when a new collections agency showed up in the Valley, contributing greatly to an 800- to 1,000-case expansion of the civil docket. Collections might seem like minor cases, but it means a lot of paperwork to shuffle, especially for clerks, she said.

“Seventy to 80 percent go to default judgment, which is handled by a clerk,” Shaw said.

And it can be challenging. Time management is a big deal for clerks since they have to juggle so many at one time.

“Every case file is very important to a person,” she said.

Where defendants and victims are concerned, “awful things are happening to them,” Shaw said.

And that means people who show up to the clerk’s office are sometimes very rude and very angry.

“It can wear on a customer service clerk,” she said. And it can be tough for clerks to keep in mind that, “They’re not mad at you. They’re mad at the situation that they’re going through.”

But somehow through it all, Shaw said, the clerks have managed to keep politics out of the building. There’s no infighting.

“We’re pretty much still just a great big family out here,” she said.

Shaw took over as clerk of court in 2003. She said she wasn’t sure she wanted to be a supervisor, but that family dynamic has made it a very enjoyable experience.

Asked if there was any type of clerk Shaw hadn’t been, she came up with three. She has sometimes served as an in-court clerk, but never permanently. And she hasn’t been a criminal clerk or a jury clerk.

“I don’t aspire to be a jury clerk,” she said.

There aren’t a whole lot of happy, friendly faces among people called in for jury duty. Shaw said she was a clerk for 20 years before she was ever called in for jury duty. She ended up getting seated and was fascinated by the experience.

“Watching it through the jurors’ eyes was so different,” she said.

The responsibility to decide guilt or innocence, she said, was immense.

“It still kind of haunts me, that responsibility. I can’t imagine what it’s like for someone who’s not as familiar with the system,” she said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.