Kathy Holen

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Transcript:  “My name is Kathy Holen and I’m a paralegal with Legal Services in Willmar. I didn’t really want to live in the Cities—I was raised on a farm—so we moved out to Willmar and I was just lucky enough they were opening up an office there.

I have my own caseload because you don’t have to be an attorney to represent people in administrative hearings. I  had this one case where the lady, she had two kids, and her only income was child support from them, and she had applied for disability benefits. She had the type of disability that you can’t really document, and it took us maybe two years to get to a hearing. We went to the hearing and we lost. The appeals council sent it back, so we went to another hearing, which took another two years, and we won at the hearing. And my client was so excited because this had been like six years it’s taken her to get benefits. So she was crying; her mom was along, and she was crying, and I even had to get a few tears because we had done this for so long. You get to know people really well.

I’m out in the boondocks, and I don’t handle any spectacular cases or anything. I just handle the everyday problems of people in the rural section of our state. You don’t have to win all these big cases, but it’s important just to go to work every day and help the people there that need it.”