Focus on the victims: Rodriguez retiring from state’s attorney’s office after 35 years

QUINCY — Anita Rodriguez will miss all the people she’s worked with in the Adams County State’s Attorney’s office.

She has great admiration for the law enforcement agencies she worked with — the Quincy Police Department, the Adams County Sheriff’s Department and the Illinois State Police — in her role as an assistant state’s attorney.

But she won’t miss the job.

“Leaving this job will be very easy,” she said. “I have never said I love my job. I’m not one of those people who can say, ‘If you love your job, you will never work a day in your life.’ I don’t like my job, but my job is very important. The work I’ve done is very important, but it’s extremely stressful and extremely demanding.”

Rodriguez’s final day on the job is Friday, June 24. She is retiring after 35 years in the state’s attorney’s office and 41 years since she started as a practicing attorney in Stockton, Kan. Her husband, Norm, retired this spring from his teaching position at John Wood Community College. They plan to move to Tennessee to be closer to their children and grandchildren.

Her first job in Adams County — she was hired by Tom Leeper, one of five state’s attorneys she worked for — was in juvenile court, which she did for six years. She has handled most of the office’s sexual assault cases for the past 10 to 15 years. She has tried 216 cases but called that number a “drop in the bucket” compared to the thousands of cases she’s handled.

“A very small fraction of cases we handle go to trial,” she said.

Rodriguez says she gets the same satisfaction, as an example, to get someone who’s charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault to plead guilty and agree to be sentenced to 40 years or 45 years — while also avoiding a trial.

“That’s just as important, if not actually more important, than the jury trials,” she said. “Your victim never has to go through that horrible process of going through the trial.”

State’s Attorney Gary Farha said it will be difficult to replace someone with Rodriguez’s experience and expertise in handling troublesome cases.

“(Sexual assault cases) are not easy cases. They’re hard to prove and they’re emotionally difficult,” he said. “Plus, you have reluctant witnesses all the time. There’s nobody with that sense of dedication who would take on cases like that and some of the difficult people she had to run through.

“You can’t lose somebody who’s been doing this for 35 years and not feel it. To have somebody like her who will do anything and is just conscientious beyond belief, sits in her office and does work is unreal. People love her because she’s non-confrontational, but she holds her own.”

The cases were draining and demanding, but Rodriguez understood the importance of her job and received satisfaction from helping assault victims.

“It’s often frustrating,” she said. “I’ve gotten results that I obviously was very pleased with, and there’s been a lot of cases when I felt that justice was not done — but I gave it my best shot.

“The only way I have made it through this many years is to focus on what I’m doing for the victims, try to help them get through the process and help them to recover from the bad things that have happened to them. With the really violent criminals, I like to think my work has probably prevented further victims.”

She noted how much she enjoyed her time as a prosecutor for Adams County Drug Court.

“You really knew you were helping those people,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve had a number of defendants thank me for helping them get back on track. This is a position where you do have direct impact on people.”

She said the job has changed considerably from when she first started.

“I started out with a sexual assault case where there was DNA evidence all over the house, but we had no DNA capability,” she said. “That man was convicted based upon the testimony from the victim. Fast forward to today where we have DNA evidence, and suddenly everybody wants DNA evidence. You can’t convict anybody unless you have DNA evidence.”

Social media also has had a tremendous impact, especially for someone who isn’t on Facebook or Twitter and might send an occasional text on her phone.

“Everybody puts all kinds of stuff on social media and has conversations on social media that they would never have had in person,” Rodriguez said. “They say all kinds of things, and then it’s all out there. … It’s difficult for me to understand why people put stuff on social media that they do, but it’s something I have to deal with on every single case. Since I don’t have a social media presence, it drives me nuts.”

Rodriguez admitted it was difficult to leave her work at the office.

“I have been at the point many times in my career where I’ve said, ‘I just cannot do this another day,’ ” she said. “But every time I’ve gotten to that point, the Lord has sent me somebody who has given me encouragement. Maybe it was at a gas station where I ran into a victim I hadn’t seen for 15 years, and they told me how well they were doing. One time I sat next to somebody at a wedding who I’d never met, and we started talking about work. She actually did counseling for people in jail, and I got a wonderful letter from her.

“I realized that this (job) was the Lord’s plan for me, and sometimes he had to send me somebody to offer me encouragement.”