“Congratulations Pat!”
Over the past 22 years, Sarah Patricia “Pat” Williams has heard that phrase more than a few times. You would too if you out-dueled the state’s best lawyers and put rapists and murderers in jail for a living.
So while Marin County’s deputy district attorney has had her fair share of compliments, she never had one quite like the one she received on Friday, May 19 — her last day on the job.
Superior Court Commissioner Roy Chernus spotted Williams across the cafeteria at the Marin County Civic Center. Bedecked in a maroon tichel headscarf that matched her jacket and sitting next to her husband, Michael, who has a full beard and wore a white knit yarmulke, she was not a challenge to spot.
“Mazel tov on your aliyah!” Chernus told Williams, 54.
When Williams told him he’d be more than welcome in her Jerusalem apartment, Chernus admitted he’s never been to Israel.
“Well, come then!” she said. “You’ll get free room and board.”
The rationale behind why the Williams family would give up career success and a home in Marin for a small Jerusalem apartment and semi-retirement is complicated and unusual — but, then again, they’ve never been the usual Jewish couple. While Sarah prosecutes criminals, Michael has spent a lifetime chasing them, first as a former Oakland cop, then as an undercover narcotics agent in Nevada and, until quite recently, a private investigator.
Mike Williams is not an overwhelmingly large man and his facial hair gives him a jovial appearance. But at 60, he still looks like he’d have no trouble chasing down and subduing a fleeing suspect. Like his wife, he has grown more observant over the last decade; in the past his considerably less jovial beard was accompanied by a scraggly ponytail as he infiltrated Nevada drug rings.
“The yarmulke covers up my bald spot,” he said with a laugh.
But neither Mike nor Sarah Williams laugh when they reveal that, in large part, they’re moving halfway around the world to be closer to each other.
“We see each other on Shabbat. That’s pretty much it,” said Sarah Williams.
“People ask me, ‘How can you leave Marin? It is so beautiful here,'” she continued, nodding at the ubiquitous rolling hills visible through the fog and mist of a surprise spring shower.
“But for us to survive here, we both have to work 10 or 12 hours a day, six days a week. Who has time to go for a hike in the hills? Who has time to go to the beach? In all the time we’ve lived in Marin, I think I’ve gone to the beach six times.”
Much of the couple’s rationale for heading to Jerusalem revolves around their 15-year-old son, Joshua. It was after Joshua began attending Hebrew classes at Chabad of Marin that the family grew observant. Pat and Mike feel that their son — who has mild cerebral palsy and vision impairment — will receive a better, more compassionate form of public education than he would here.
“Joshua can never get a high school diploma here. The California exit exams don’t allow any accommodations,” said Pat Williams of the testing system recently struck down by judicial mandate (and in this case, the judge and the prosecutor are in agreement).
Mike Williams, who lived in Israel from 1979 to 1984, left for the Jewish state on Monday, May 22. His eldest of three daughters from a previous marriage is already there. Sarah and Joshua will join him in June.
And, if you ignore the highly unusual details around Mike and Sarah Williams’ jobs and their son’s special needs, they’re just another observant family moving from Northern California to Israel, where the sight of a woman in a headscarf is hardly noteworthy (though Sarah Williams stresses that she wore a wig in court, not a scarf).
“You become enmeshed in the legal community and the county community. I am going to miss the people. But there comes a point when you have to examine life and say, ‘Is this the ultimate goal?'” said Sarah Williams thoughtfully.
“Is living in Marin in a house in Lucas Valley the only thing I want in life? I’ve done the lawyer thing, I’m a senior trial attorney, but people have spiritual appetites.”
Joshua Williams wants to learn Torah in school while his parents are studying it at home. The family wants to walk to shul together. And, as they told Commissioner Chernus, they really do want visitors.
“In Israel, we have a chance for people to come and visit us more than if we moved to, say, Green Bay. How many people go to Green Bay on vacation? What’s in Green Bay?” asked Michael Williams. “Cheese,” answered his wife. And they both laughed. Together.