Lois Simonds

Student

“I’m never going to give my son the chance to say, ‘Look, mom. If you can quit school, I can quit school.’”

“I dropped out of school in the tenth grade,” says Lois Simonds. “But things are really looking up now.” And part of the situation that’s looking up for Lois is her recent award of a Dale Ride internship. “I’ll be working in the LA office of Senator Diane Watson, probably doing research,” says Lois. “I hope to be a criminal attorney and I think this program will give me an insider’s view of the law.” Being a prosecutor is her ultimate goal. “It’s a high-stress field,” she says with a laugh. “But it’s easier than psychiatry.”

Lois has been thinking a lot about the matter of capital punishment in recent weeks. “Basically, I’m for it because I think it’s a deterrent and it’s important to maintain an ordered society,” she says. She realizes that—working in a District attorney’s office—she might have to push for such a sentence to be rendered by a judge. “But I feel I want to protect the people who are innocent and being tough on criminals guarantees that all of us will be given our rights.”

But when she’s not pondering such grave issues, Lois has a presence of pure joy that she keeps foremost in her thoughts: her five-year-old son. “I don’t think I could survive another one,” she says, laughing. “But he’s my honey and it’s actually he who pushed me back into school. I want to tell him, ‘Mommy went to school because she knows how necessary it is,’” explains Lois. “And he’s so excited about what I’m doing. He tells me, ‘I can’t wait to do homework, mommy.’”

Her son is also providing a good excuse to play these days. “I get to do all that ‘boy stuff’—baseball, basketball, little cars, etc.—that I never got to do before,” says Lois. “And nobody will point at me and say, ‘Look at the tomboy!’ because I’m just being a mom! And nobody has to know how much fun I’m having.”

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