LAW GRAD GOES FROM ROCK BOTTOM TO THE TOP OF HER CLASS AT AGE OF 37

If you want a glimpse of how the odds were stacked against Cupcake Brown,
all you have to do is look at one of her law school textbooks.

There is a simple definition scrawled above every word she didn't
understand. Above "conjecture," she wrote: "guesswork." Above "culpability"
she wrote "blameworthy." She translated almost every paragraph.

Those textbook pages only begin to tell the story of the miracle that, at
37, Brown will graduate near the top of her class from the University of
San Francisco Law School this weekend and start a job as an associate at a
big San Francisco legal firm.

Each time she tells her story -- and she's told it often -- she knows some
people won't believe she weathered years of abuse in foster care, an
adolescence of selling herself on the street for crack, a stint as a
gang-banger in South Central Los Angeles and a drug rehab program before
she fought her way back to become a lawyer.

"Hey, I understand why it's hard to believe," she said with a shrug when
she was studying for her final exams last week. "I mean, there aren't that
many dope-fiend gangsta hos in my profession."

It's the time of year for inspirational graduation stories, and I've done
this job long enough that I thought I'd heard them all. But this one is
different. Every time the "experts" talk about how test scores don't lie,
I'll think of how the numbers and statistics lied about Cupcake Brown.

The story began 26 years ago in San Diego when Brown was 11 and found her
mother dead from a seizure. Her stepfather, Tim Long, wanted to adopt her,
but Brown's biological father got custody instead. Soon after, she was
passed in and out of a dozen foster homes.

Brown still refers to Long as her "daddy," and the two are very close. "Her
birth father showed up out of nowhere to take her," Long told me from his
home in San Diego. "All I could do was cry with her."

It didn't take long for Brown to choose life on the streets over being in
foster homes. She used drugs to escape and stole or sold anything she had
to get them. When she was 13, she was sent to a foster home in Los Angeles
and fell in with a gang. It wasn't hard to figure out why. "Girl, I loved
that gang," she told me. "It was the closest thing I had to a real family."

When she finally came back to San Diego, she still couldn't kick her drug
habit. "I hated to see her like that, but you can't turn off love like a
faucet," Long said. "I had to hang in there with her."

Brown managed to get a job she loved as a legal secretary to Ken Rose, who
specialized in employment law. She was already practiced at covering up her
drug use, even though she'd shriveled to a size 1. Eventually, she told
Rose about her habit and he helped get her into a treatment program.

"I had no idea until she told me," Rose said. "But she helped me be a
better lawyer. I knew it was worth taking a chance on her."

After a couple of false starts, Brown kicked her habit and enrolled at San
Diego City College while she continued to work for Rose. Six years later,
she entered San Diego State University and graduated magna cum laude in 1998.

She scored poorly on her law entrance exams and was rejected by four of the
five law schools she applied to, but USF accepted her into the class of 2001.

The gamble paid off.

Next fall she'll join the litigation department at McCutchen Doyle Brown &
Enersen, where she's worked in the summer. As far as McCutchen partner Bob
Sims is concerned, hiring her was a slam-dunk: "We think she's going to
make a terrific lawyer."

A lot of others think so, too. Most of them will be coming to Brown's
graduation. Rose will be there, along with his family. So will Brown's daddy.

"I only wish her mother could see this," he said. But Brown thinks wherever
her mother is, she knows her Cupcake beat the odds.

"What I really want is to become a district attorney so I can help change
things," she told me during a study break at her apartment. "I know now
it's possible."

Maybe it's even possible that one day there will be a Judge Cupcake Brown.