I once defended a single mom caught stealing a $5 blue pen for her son’s birthday. She couldn’t afford it, and I convinced the judge to let her go.
Twenty-five years later, while running my own law firm, I interviewed a young lawyer named Milan Roque. His eyes looked familiar. Then he mentioned a story his mom told him every birthday—about a lawyer who saved her over a blue pen.
It was him. The boy she’d stolen it for.
I hired him immediately. Months later, he fought—and won—a case for my struggling niece, reuniting me with family I thought I’d lost forever.
A few weeks after, he handed me the same blue pen in a box. Now it sits in our lobby with a plaque:
“This pen changed two lives. Maybe it can change more.”
Small kindnesses ripple farther than we ever imagine.
