Elly Leggatt is all heart. Where it leads, she follows. When she encounters need, she meets it. Elly conducted outreach as part of a one-unit class that I co-taught with Asher, on Homelessness Law and Policy. She met Tony, a blind homeless man. When later I told her his foot had been run over when a driver ran up onto the sidewalk, Elly went to find him. When people organized a protest, about the failure of the police to charge the driver, Elly went to the protest. When an elderly client called because she was being charged for PG&E, when she had a rental contract saying she shouldn’t be charged, even though this was totally outside of our wheelhouse, Elly stuck with the case, followed bureaucratic mazes, and got the charge dismissed. She went out with me to meet our homeless folks where they lived. (They loved her English accent.) Even there, Elly’s heart went out to them. When a client died of a fentanyl overdose on the pavement of a McDonald’s parking lot, she grieved and then wrote an incredibly moving letter to the Oakland City Council, about how the City had failed him. He had been sick and in pain and was never offered housing; Elly concluded by demanding that the City put more money into finding housing for “people who are too poor to afford rent, but are nonetheless human.” May she protect her wonderful heart through life’s journey.

– Osha Neumann, Clean Slate Clinic