Meet the first Filipino American judge in the US

Screengrab from ABC7.com

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mel “Red” Recana, the first-ever Filipino American judge in the United States, has been serving in the California judiciary for 40 years.  

It all still seems surreal for Recana, given his humble beginnings in the Philippines. In an interview with ABC7, he said his family was poor and his father, a town police officer, only had a third-grade education.

Recana said his father discouraged him from pursuing his dream to become either an Army general or an actor.

“My dad said, you know what son, to be an actor, you’ve got to be good looking or extremely ugly. You’re just an average guy. So, what am I going to do now? My dad said, you love to talk, maybe you should be a lawyer,” the Fil-Am judge recalled.

Inspired by American Defense Counsel Clarence Darrow, Recana pursued law.

Juggling stints as a court reporter to sustain his studies, the Fil-Am judge graduated from the University of the East in Manila in 1964. A few years later, he migrated to California and started a blue-collar job at the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. 

An encounter with a Filipino lawyer following a car accident turned the tide for Recana. 

“He said, Mel, I heard you’re a lawyer from the Philippines. I said yes. Well, you can take the bar without going back to law school. I said, why is that? Well, because the Philippines is a common law jurisdiction country,” Recana recalled.

In the mid-’70s, Recana passed the bar exam. He later went back to school, earning a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. 

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He became the first Fil-Am deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County. His career took a monumental leap when Governor Jerry Brown appointed him as a judge on May 27, 1981 — making history as the first ever Fil-Am judge in the US.

A golden legacy

Fast forward to 2015, Governor Brown also appointed his son, Julian, as a Superior Court judge. Recana proudly swore in his son. They made history as the first Fil-Am father and son to serve in the California judiciary.

“I really do owe everything to (my father) for this one. He was the big dreamer,” Judge Julian Recana told ABC7. “He put in the idea that I could also become a judge or become an attorney. I never thought I couldn’t be that because I had him as a father.”

Judge Mel Recana has recently been honored by the Philippine American Bar Association with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Recana expressed gratitude for his journey saying, “God was with me all this time. I’ve never wavered in my faith. It was quite an adventure, really.”