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RAFAEL DIAZ, WOODBRIDGE CLASS, 2010 BY TERRY CARELLA
RAFAEL DIAZ
COMBINES HIS LOVE FOR THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM AND THE LAW Rafael Diaz (Woodbridge Class, 2010), a lieutenant with the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety, knew from an early age that he wanted to go to law school. Every decision, from high school through college, was made to position himself for a career in the law.
But, as he was coming to the end of his time in college, he looked at law school again. Married, and with a young daughter, Diaz decided it was not the right time to make a commitment to law school. “Life kind of creeps up on you,” he remembered. “I had to look at other things. I was volunteering for the Holland Police Department as a reserve police officer and wondered about what to do for work. I reasoned that, since I planned to be a prosecutor in the criminal justice system, what better way to learn about its inner workings than from that vantage point. Well, lo and behold, I really enjoyed it! I loved the police-citizen interactions and I loved the law at that level. So I thought to myself, well, I love law; I love law enforcement; I think I would like to be a police officer. So that’s exactly what I did.” After five years at the Holland Police Department, Diaz joined Kalamazoo Public Safety in 2005, giving himself more time for family and the opportunity to dream about law school again. Diaz learned that WMU-Cooley’s many scheduling options could make pursuing his dream possible. In 2007, he started law school at WMU-Cooley’s Grand Rapids campus taking classes during the day, knowing that if his work schedule changed, he could continue by taking advantage of other scheduling options the law school offered. “For a person who was on the streets
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