Legal Services expands to Mat-Su

Fifteen years ago, Sunny Radebaugh was in charge of her life. She fixed her own car, sewed leather and worked as a bartender.

“I was an all-Alaskan woman,” said Radebaugh, who lives in Meadow Lakes. “Then things just started to deteriorate on me. I started not to be able to open a bottle, couldn’t open a keg, started dropping glasses. It was getting to the point where I was losing the use of my hands.”

A degenerative bone disease was ravaging Radebaugh’s body. She soon needed a personal-care assistant (PCA) to help her walk, eat, comb her hair, use the bathroom. A state assessor decided otherwise, so Radebaugh fought a three-year battle with the help of Alaska Legal Services Corp., and eventually won a non-monetary settlement from the state that brought about a change in policy.

“Alaska Legal Services does more than helping people with rent, with their children’s cases,” Radebaugh said. “They went balls to the wall with this. [ALSC attorney Nikole Nelson] would not let go. I’ve watched this woman and this agency seriously save lives. If it weren’t for the care I’m getting with this program, I would be on a bedpan someplace. It is a victim’s victory to know that lady and the people that work with her.”

ALSC, a 44-year-old nonprofit, is the largest statewide provider of free legal services in Alaska. Earlier this year, the organization sent one of its attorneys to work out of donated office space at 415 Bailey St., in Palmer, to better serve Radebaugh and other clients in Mat-Su. ALSC attorneys previously had commuted from Anchorage to handle Valley cases.

Approximately 88,379 people now live in the Mat-Su Borough, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. ALSC served more than 200 Mat-Su families between July 1, 2009 and June 30 this year.

“The growing population in the Mat-Su Borough justifies it to a certain extent,” said Nelson, who now serves as executive director for the Alaska Legal Services Corp. “And, we received $35,000 from the Mat-Su Borough’s human services matching grant program, so we decided it would be best to have a local presence there.”

Thirty-four percent of ALS’s cases in 2009, statewide, involved family law, primarily for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault or child abuse. Housing constituted 17 percent of the organization’s statewide caseload that year, followed by 12 percent each for consumer/finance and health-related cases, 6 percent for income maintenance and 1 percent each for employment, juvenile, individuals rights and wills/estates.

“We’re also doing a lot of foreclosure work in the Valley,” Nelson said.

ALSC serves low-income clients who fall within certain income restrictions: from 125 percent up to 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines adjusted for Alaska. The federal poverty guideline for a family of four in Alaska is $27,570. ALSC is prohibited from handling certain categories of cases, such as class actions, criminal defense, representation of prisoners in any type of case, and representation of undocumented noncitizens, with an exception if the case involves domestic violence or human trafficking, according to an article published in the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Justice Forum.

Easier access to legal services was one of the three most important factors responsible for a decline in domestic violence, according to a December 2002 study by economists from Colgate University and the University of Arkansas.

A Web site explaining the survey’s conclusions said access to free legal services helped domestic violence survivors get protective orders, custody of their children, child support and sometimes public assistance. It also assisted the women in achieving physical safety and financial security and enabled them to leave their abusers. Economic improvement in women’s situations and demographic changes (an increasingly better-educated female population, for example) also contributed to the decline, the study stated.

“The continued expansion of the availability of civil legal services will likely continue to lower the incidence of intimate partner abuse in the future,” the study stated.

Overall, ALSC estimates that for every 100 callers who asked for legal aid in 2009, ALSC attorneys were able to help 54. Of the 46 rejected callers, 17 did not meet requirements for assistance, but 29 could have received some type of legal service if ALSC had more resources.

After Radebaugh emerged from her battle against the state, she sought ALSC’s help in a foreclosure case.

“The judge told me, ‘Do you have any idea how fortunate you are to have ALS representing you?’” Radebaugh said. “If it wasn’t for those people, people would not be alive. They do it because they’re the most dedicated group of attorneys.”