Zolin Puts Experience to Work at Legal Center

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

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Zolin Puts Experience to Work at Legal Center

By DANIEL DULLUM, Staff Writer

For most of his professional career, Frank Zolin has found ways to help others within the framework of his duties. In retirement, that approach to life hasn’t changed.

Zolin, 71, is a member of the board of directors for the Legal Center for the Elderly and Disabled in Sacramento, an agency he’s been involved with since June.

His interest in seniors’ legal issues began during a 10-year stint as a budget and management analyst for the Los Angeles County Chief Administrative Office.

“I handled a lot of budgets—district attorney, probation department, all the courts—and I started getting exposure to a lot of issues. I negotiated contracts on behalf of the county on childcare facilities and nursing homes,” Zolin explains.

“In the 1990s, I found seniors were experiencing problems very similar to those of abandoned and affected children,” he said. “That developed my interest and involvement in senior issues.”

Zolin notes that California’s estimated population of 4.8 million seniors age 60 and older puts increased demands on agencies such as the Legal Center for the Elderly and Disabled, a private, non-profit corporation which provides free legal services to low-income seniors and disabled persons.

“The center is a very small operation,” Zolin says. “Our budget is less than $500,000. We have less than a dozen full- and part-time staff.”

The Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program, HICAP, operates within the center.

The agency focuses primarily on medical and financial government benefits, housing, elder abuse prevention, long-term care issues and rights of people with disabilities.

The center handles civil issues only. Criminal acts, like those involving fraud, are referred to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

Because of reduced government grants, and a limited budget to begin with, the center’s biggest need is for pro bono attorney service, Zolin said.

“We don’t have the budget to hire attorneys, so basically we need volunteers, not just for my center, but for many agencies,” he says. “There’s a great need out there, and it would be great if attorneys would devote more time to assist us.”

Zolin says volunteer attorneys are of great value in common senior-related cases including landlord-tenant disputes.

“It’s maybe a little problem to most people, but not to that senior who’s facing eviction through no fault of their own,” Zolin says. “For example, maybe a homeless senior is involved in a traffic accident, in the hospital and has no one to represent them.

“That could be a personal injury lawsuit, and a contingency fee could be a big deal,” he continues. “On the other hand, the attorney representing that person in a settlement might be able to benefit that person. You never know. Maybe it only takes a one-hour phone call to resolve it.”

Before he retired, Zolin managed the daily operations of the State Board of Control, processing claims against the state as well as those received for crime victims. He worked to streamline the procedures, “significantly reducing claim processing times.”

Zolin came to Sacramento in 1991, answering Gov. Pete Wilson’s request to serve as director of the Department of Motor Vehicles. He staunchly defends the oft-maligned department.

He declares:

“The vast majority of DMV employees are dedicated, competent, and I’ll stack them up with any group of employees....Everybody’s got to assume their share of the responsibility—including the Legislature and government—that’s just the way it works. You can blame employees if you want, but they’re the wrong people to blame. You have to look at the people in charge. We did cut down the waiting time in lines, we improved some services. We were pretty successful in maintaining the appointment program.”

Before leaving Los Angeles for Sacramento, Zolin served 15 years as executive officer and jury commissioner of the Los Angeles Superior Court. He also served as the Los Angeles County clerk.

Throughout his career, Zolin has served as a part-time faculty member and lecturer on management and court administration at various schools, and has been a consultant to public and private organizations on a variety of projects. With all he’s accomplished, Zolin is proudest of his role in organizing the Children’s Court in Los Angeles, which opened in 1996.

“It was a 10-year effort to build the Children’s Court building,” he explains. “Not only the planning and public presentations to get it approved, but also to be the project director, work with the architects and construction people, and acquire the land. It was a very complicated, very gratifying experience.”

He says the feedback from court staff, parents and children has been very positive.

“They feel it was a tremendous improvement over the traditional, sort of threatening formal courtroom,” he comments.

Zolin lives in the Sacramento suburb of Fair Oaks with his wife, Jan, whose daughter, son-in-law and granddaughters live in nearby Roseville.

“For the first time in my life, I’ve got a big family with seven grandkids,” he says. “You may think my working career made me a wise man—I don’t know about that, but somebody once said, ‘I know what it’s like to be young, but you might not know what it’s like to be old.’”

Zolin said he hopes his years of experience will help his latest venture provide a community-wide benefit, giving seniors tools to help them remain independent. “You don’t want to see seniors start to slip through the cracks,” he observes. “Based on my experience, I know there may not be a way to solve the problem, but we can help these seniors reduce the impact of those problems.”