Latina Alston motions to her daughter, Tia, left, to keep quiet in Topeka on Sept. 15, 2004. The two were sitting in a lecture at Washburn University School of Law on how to survive the first year of law school.

Latina Alston carries several bags filled with law books and her young son Malcolm up the stairs to their second-floor apartment in Topeka on Sept. 15.

Latina Alston, left, stands with her family in their new home in Wichita on Dec. 18. Latina is holding Dylan, 1. At center is Tia, 11. Latina’s mother, Dee Alston, is on the right. Standing below is Malcolm, 5.

Wichita ? Latina Alston is not yet 30. She has three children out of wedlock with three fathers, two of whom have not helped much with the kids. She raised the children in poverty all their lives.

That’s about to change.

Latina’s story goes beyond absent fathers, food stamps and welfare checks. People at the Wichita Bar Association know that of their 1,175 members, only eight are African-American — the newest member being Latina.

Friends know what bothers her most: That she and her kids have lived off her mother, Dee Alston, a 57-year-old janitor at Botanica who earns $17,000 a year.

Moving past failure

Friends also know that Latina studied her schoolbooks until she could barely see. And they know that few people ever go to the lengths she does to help other people.

The faculty at Washburn University’s School of Law know that the failure rate of students there is 10 percent to 12 percent after the first year. Latina got through law school with no regular baby sitter, no other regular support, little money, huge debt and two children most of the way.

When she graduated in May 2007, she was four months pregnant with her third child.

Earlier this month, as Sedgwick County’s newest assistant public defender, she helped clear a Wichita man of charges that could have put him in prison for years. He was innocent, she said.

Eight days before Christmas, she closed on a house that she will move into with her children — and her mother.

In July 2004, days before she went to law school in Topeka, Latina ran a stop sign in Wichita and was pulled over. She had no insurance, and this was her third moving violation in a short time.

“You could be facing jail time,” the officer told her.

Latina was shocked. Washburn, hearing she was in jail, unable to go to class, would kick her out.

She was already in debt $18,000 for the loans to get her business degree from Wichita State University. She lived with her children, 8 and 2, in her mother’s tiny house.

Help from her boss

Latina did not intend that her boss at her part-time job would find out about her legal trouble.But her boss did.

Cynthia Berner Harris is the director of Wichita’s public libraries. Latina worked for her at the main branch downtown.

She knew that Latina, in spite of her poverty, in spite of raising two children, was a regular volunteer at the Lord’s Diner. She knew that Latina had volunteered 5,000 hours at Botanica, where her mother worked. She knew Latina worked for Americorps, too, and that she planned to go to law school.

So Berner Harris paid Latina’s traffic fine, bought her car insurance and told Latina to talk to the people in court.

Latina went to City Hall, approaching the city prosecutor handling her case, Gwendolyn Horsch, a graduate of Washburn University’s School of Law.

Latina told her what had happened, and how this traffic violation could derail her law school plans. She had the paperwork in hand, paying the fine and the insurance.

“She didn’t make excuses,” Horsch said at the time.

Horsch took Latina up the hall and found a judge, Richard Shull — another Washburn graduate.

“You want to become a lawyer?” Shull joked to Latina. “Why would you want to ruin your life like that?”

Then he signed the papers and wished her good luck.

Latina walked to the elevator, stunned. Horsch got on the elevator with her.

“OK,” the prosecutor said. “Here’s how you get through the first year of law school …”

Balancing two lives

In her first year at Washburn, in 2004, Latina cried in class all the time, sobbing quietly while she studied torts, contract law, criminal procedure.

At home, she was potty training her son, Malcolm. She studied for hours every night with Malcolm and Tia vying for her attention. Every day, she got Tia to school, Malcolm to day care, to class, studying at night, preparing meals and falling into bed.

The teachers had warned her that the first year breaks a lot of people.

Faculty members say that to survive a typical law school semester of 15 credit hours, students must study four hours a week per credit; 15 hours means 60 hours of studying a week.

Latina struggled. She nearly failed a writing exam that would have sent her packing had she not passed. During spring break, in March 2005, she had an emotional meltdown.

Her car broke down. She spent $600 fixing it, then collapsed. When classes resumed, she failed to get out of bed. Stress, welfare, food stamps, guilt over living off her mother and relentless study had wrecked her health.

For two days, she took her kids to school and day care, but went back to bed instead of class. She was so depressed she could barely move.

Berner Harris saved her again, by sending $500.

Then the phone rang. It was another black student, one of 12 in the first-year class. Are you OK? Why aren’t you in class? Can I help you study? Do you need anything?

“At Washburn, the black students felt isolated, alone, except that we thought the white faculty and students were watching us, maybe waiting for us to fail,” Latina said later. “So we’d pretty much made a vow that none of us were going to fail.”

She got out of bed.

In early June Latina’s car broke down again. She was crying in class again, facing failure. She needed a 2.0 GPA or she would wash out.

She passed. Barely.

She hung on, through the second year. Then the third.

All 12 black students graduated.

Passing the bar

By the time she got her diploma in May 2007, Latina had made one of those mistakes she admits she’s prone to. When she slipped into her cap and gown, she was four months pregnant, still unmarried.

Dylan Wharton-Alston, her third child, was born in October 2007. “I guess I have a habit of meeting men who I think care about me and don’t really,” she said later.

Dylan’s father would be the only one of the three to take full responsibility for his child, sharing custody, bearing his full share of the costs of raising his son.

But Latina was single, and for the next four months she studied to pass the bar exam, often with three children clinging to her. She passed the Kansas bar in February.

In December, in Judge Ben Burgess’ fifth-floor courtroom at the Sedgwick County Courthouse, a sheriff’s deputy escorted in a handcuffed man, Gary Ingram, a 25-year old defendant.

Each day of the trial, the deputy would take off the handcuffs and watch as Ingram put on a suit jacket borrowed from the chief public defender, Steve Osburn, one of Ingram’s defense attorneys.

Ingram would sit beside Osburn, and his other public defender, Latina Alston. He faced four criminal counts.

This case was Latina’s first, and it was shameful, she said.

“I know you probably hear this all the time from public defenders, that this guy is innocent,” she said one day. “But this guy really is innocent.”

One day later, with Osburn doing most of the work, they did win; a jury acquitted him.

The charges against Ingram, including aggravated robbery, would have put him in prison for years.

“We couldn’t give him back his six months, but we gave him his freedom,” Latina said.

As Sedgwick County’s newest public defender, Latina earns $45,000 a year.

She owes more than $100,000 in student loans.

After she came home from law school last year, Latina tried to pay back Berner Harris, the library director, who refused to accept anything.

“The thing that sticks out to me about her is that even with the way her life turned out, she’s never surrendered to the temptation to be a victim,” Berner Harris said. “She never told many people what she was up against.”