King County Courthouse, Presiding Courtroom, 9:00 a.m., the second Wednesday of the month…the jury box fills with eager and excited men and women of different ages, races, and backgrounds all filled with a sense of accomplishment. Proud children, spouses, significant others, mothers, fathers, grandparents, counselors, and attorneys gather as spectators in the benches. Everyone is waiting for the King County Drug Court judges to emerge from chambers and preside over a remarkable event – an event marking the completion of a minimum 11-month demanding and sometimes grueling program, the dismissal of felony… Read More

The employees of King County’s Noxious Weed Program know they can’t stop the spread of invasive plants on their own, so they’re bringing a secret weapon to the fight – local residents and businesses. “We try to teach people enough so they can do better at controlling these plants. A lot of people want to control noxious weeds and invasive plants, but not everyone knows how. We offer that expertise,” said Sasha Shaw, the noxious weed education specialist. Throughout the year, staff from the program attend public events to answer questions about… Read More

According to Kelly Mangiaracina, King County’s Task Force Coordinator for Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC), an estimated 300-500 children are forced into prostitution in Seattle every year. When the CSEC Task Force was convened by Juvenile Court Judge Barbara A. Mack in 2013, it hoped to change that. “King County was very fortunate to realize this is an issue. We’re very fortunate to have great organizations in the area that want to do something about it,” Mangiaracina said at the Equity and Social Justice “Stopping Human Trafficking” Lunch and Learn held on June… Read More

Making homelessness in King County a rare event, and when it does occur, a brief and one-time experience, is the mission of the Committee to End Homelessness (CEH) King County, and its latest annual report details how it will achieve these goals. King County now has the third largest stock of homeless housing in the country, behind only New York City and Los Angeles, and yet on a single night, January 14, 2014, more than 3,123 individuals were living outside and another 6,171 individuals were in shelters or transitional housing, per the… Read More

Working as a King County Drug Court Case Manager is Yuka Hayashi’s dream job. “I am so happy that I’m here,” Hayashi said. “It’s such an opportunity to work for a program that helps so many people. There are people who walk in to the program that are so broken down. They have no family, no home, their health is bad— they have nothing. We have the opportunity to give them all these resources and I see people’s lives change.” Hayashi works with defendants enrolled in the King County Drug Diversion Court,… Read More