Some of us have Jobs, some Careers. A lucky few have Callings. Here is one such, the vivacious, acerbic Kathryn Petroff, who, so much like my late, great friend Karen Wilkinson, used her legal skills as a criminal-law attorney, defending the downtrodden and the scorned. And when her career took her beyond criminal defense, to judicial review, she became a force for the public interest, her work instrumental in unseating not one, but two bad judges. (Yes, Virginia, there are all kinds of Bad Judges out there!!)

She is also a courageous cancer survivor. When I asked her for photos to use for her portrait, the first one she sent me looked like she’d done battler with Smaug the Dragon himself, yet she had a tiny brave smile on her face. “What a brave smile,” I texted, and her reply was “Radiation makes me sleepy.” Is she a Trouper, or what?

And she has a fondness for Dorothy Sayers and her hero, Lord Peter Wimsey. (Kat, there is no H in Wimsey. I checked.) And her son Toby followed her legal footsteps, going to Harvard Law, and was a prosecutor, then went civil, and now finds his bliss in bond transactions–I think. Being an ignoramus of both law and bonds I may have gotten that muddled.

But mostly Kathryn Petroff is a keenly intelligent, incandescent human being, and I’m glad to know her.

Here are the words to the acrostic:

Kathryn Petroff

Kick/start a life with labor pains and soap
And Independence ready to say Nope
To surface-y success’s col de Mort
Half Frog-marched down Life’s dusty corridor
RIGHT WRONGS became her conjurable Stuff. O
Yes and Sure, Adversity does scuff
NYET Evil DA to Battle–call their bluff

NOTE: a Col de Mort is a way to weaponize an epee, turning a harmless fencing instrument into a deadly weapon via its sharp-pointed “collar of death.”