Friday, June 17, 2005
Page 3
Services Set for Commissioner Preciliano Recendez, Dead at 74
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Services will be held June 25 for Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Preciliano Recendez, who died Tuesday at age 74.
The judge learned a month ago that he had liver cancer, Northeast District Supervising Judge Coleman Swart said. He worked through Friday and was to begin chemotherapy Monday, but was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer and died the next day, Swart explained.
“He was probably the hardest working judicial officer in the district,” which includes the Pasadena and Alhambra courthouses, the supervising judge commended. “It’s a tremendous loss for us.”
Recendez had presided over a high-volume department in Pasadena since 2002, hearing traffic violations, unlawful detainers, misdemeanors, and small claims cases. He did similar work at the since-closed Monrovia courthouse, to which he was assigned after the Superior Court and municipal courts unified.
He was elected a commissioner in 1995 and sat at the Los Padrinos juvenile court facility in Downey before going to Monrovia.
Recendez came to the law relatively late in life. He was a 45-year-old father of four when he applied to University of West Los Angeles School of Law after learning that Xerox Corporation, where he worked, was going to close the division where he worked.
He stayed with Xerox in another capacity, went to school at night, took an early retirement, and opened a law practice in his garage after being admitted in 1983. He became well known in courthouses in the eastern part of the county, primarily as a juvenile and criminal law practitioner, and was hired as a Superior Court referee in 1991.
He sat all over the county in that capacity. “My motto was: Have gavel, will travel,” he once told the MetNews.
Since-retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jaime Corral said he championed Recendez’s hiring because he was enthusiastic and because there were few Latino judicial officers in the county at the time.
The June 25 services will be held at Rose Hills Memorial Park, 3888 Workman Mills Road in Whittier, in the Sky Rose Chapel. Entry is through Gate One.
Survivors include the judge’s wife of 41 years, Rita Recendez.
Copyright 2005, Metropolitan News Company