Magistrate judge retires after 30 years on bench

After 30 years on the bench, Wrangell's district magistrate will conclude her legal career today.

Chris Ellis has served as a magistrate judge for First District Court in Wrangell for 14 of those years, with most of her preceding tenure spent in Craig.

When she graduated with her bachelor's degree in 1973, law hadn't been on her mind, but Alaska was.

"Basically I studied anthropology with a specialty in archaeology, and my goal was to come to Alaska," she said.

Ellis found herself drawn to the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a forerunner to the AmeriCorps program.

"There wasn't a huge group of people that really wanted to go to Alaska, and I desperately did," she recalled. "I originally went to Nome, up in the Arctic. I was supposed to be a 'high school recreation counselor' at the local boarding school. It was basically to entertain and help teach the kids, and keep them involved after hours. Unfortunately, the boarding school had closed three months before I got to Alaska. And so I got to Nome and there was no job. So I wound up working with the local native non-profit corporation. I had a chance to get out and visit all of the villages in the Bering Straits region."

Within her VISTA program, the corporation soon ran out of projects for Ellis to do.

"I wound up with Alaska Legal Services, which was the start of my legal volunteer," she said. "I discovered I was pretty good at solving problems, and was pretty good at what I was doing. Eventually I decided I was going to get a law degree."

Through the Western Interstate Compact for Higher Education, she was able to attend law school at the University of Idaho three years, working in Alaska during the summers. During that time she met and married her husband, Wayne Ellis, and the couple had a baby. Wayne was and still is a fisherman, and Chris' life took another change of direction as they fished and homesteaded.

"We lived on the boat for basically almost five years," she said. The Ellises managed to get a homestead at Thoms Place, on the southern end of Wrangell Island. They build a cabin there and fulfilled their obligations to the program.

Eventually, by 1988 they decided their eldest son would benefit from a public school setting, after three years of home schooling. Ellis began looking for work that would allow them to put him through school. She found a position at Sand Point, working there on a part-time basis for about a year.

"I wound up coming to the court system as a rural court magistrate," she said. Ellis found she enjoyed the duties, and soon began looking for similar opportunities back in Southeast. One such opening came about in Craig, and at the start of 1989 Ellis and her family relocated to Prince of Wales Island.

"I went from a part-time job to a full-time job," she said. "Craig was a good fit for our family. It was a good place to raise our oldest son."

The family's eventual goal was to return to Wrangell, having already established the connection there with their homestead. Ellis did not plan to do it as a judge, however, and considered returning to fishing.

"My first benchmark was going to be when our oldest son finished high school," she said. "That would've been back in 1999." But when twin babies came along in 1994, "That kind of reset the clock."

Not that she didn't enjoy her work, or think it less than useful. "It's my way of giving back to the community, because it's something I can do," Ellis said. "I enjoy what I'm doing. I try really hard."

The job could be difficult, with long hours and an emotional toll. A rural magistrate also filled various roles, some of them surprising. For example, in Sand Point Ellis also played the part of coroner, having to attend to every reported death for her district.

She felt her prior experiences had helped shape her view from the bench. "It's incredibly helpful to have raised a family, because it gives you a much better understanding of where people are coming from. Having done something more than just going to school. A variety of experiences I think contribute to a good judge," she considered. "I kind of understand a little bit more where a lot of people we're dealing with are coming from, because I was out there living on the docks and living on the boat, homesteading."

The remoteness of rural court districts presented logistical challenges as well, especially when Ellis first started.

"We worked very hard to make sure things got done within the appropriate time frames," she recalled. "Some things took a little bit longer. We were at the forefront, I think, nationwide in terms of doing things telephonically, because that was the only way we could do things. You couldn't get physically from one place to another quickly.

"Everything was manual. Computers were just starting to come in. Electronics were just starting to come in." While offices had telephone service, most courts lacked even fax machines. The courts did make use of multi-tracked cassettes for recording court proceedings, but decisions and forms were all taken down by hand and transported by mail. "That was about as high-tech as we got."

The opportunity for the family to transfer to Wrangell came in 2004, and Ellis took it.

"It was a good time," she reflected.

The pay scale was a step above, and it was a good setting for the Ellis' boys to grow up in. Her family had been active in theatrical productions on Prince of Wales, and in Wrangell Ellis became involved in the local quilting guild and chorale group.

Her boys now grown, Ellis intends to stay in Wrangell during her retirement. She intends to travel more frequently, starting with a cruise with her sister later this summer.

"We live here. This is our home, we're not going anywhere. We have no plans even to snowbird at this point," she said.