Friday, December 7, 2007
Page 3
Mia Baker, Budget Official in D.A.’s Office, Dies at 67
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Services are pending for Mia A. Baker, a longtime official of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office who died this week at the age of 67.
District Attorney Steve Cooley informed his staff in a memo that Baker died Wednesday morning of lung cancer. Baker, had been diagnosed with lung cancer in July, Cooley said, noting that she who was not a smoker and had been “the picture of health.”
Baker graduated from Stanford University in 1961, and received a masters degree in education from the school in 1963. She graduated from Southwestern School of Law in 1985, and was admitted to the State Bar of California that year.
While attending law school, she served as the Law Review Note and Comment editor; was selected as Dean’s Scholar, Bradley Scholar and Carrol Scholar; and was awarded the Wall Street Journal Award and the Corpus Juris Secundum Award.
Baker joined the District Attorney’s Office as its Victim Witness Assistance Program director in 1985. She assumed the role of Grants Coordinator in 1993. Most recently, she was the special assistant to the Bureau of Management and Budget director.
Baker was responsible for acquiring and administering funds for the office on a wide range of crime prevention, intervention, and suppression programs, Cooley explained.
Cooley attributed his office’s receipt of millions of grant dollars over the past 14 years to Baker’s efforts. He said that the grant dollars allowed the office to maintain staffing levels during difficult fiscal times which would have prevented promotions and might have otherwise resulted in lay-offs.
“Mia was a tremendous asset to the entire Office and she will be greatly missed,” Cooley said. “We offer our deepest condolences to her family and friends.”
He credited her with having recently secured the $2 million grant to begin the office’s Digital Archiving project, after previously security funding for such projects as Abolish Chronic Truancy, Clearinghouse Electronic System, Gang Violence Suppression, Heightened Enforcement and Targeting, Juvenile Offender Intervention Network, Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grant, Major Narcotics Violator’s Program, Stalking and Threat Assessment, Strategies Against Gang Environments, Statutory Rape Vertical Prosecution, Spousal Abuser Prosecution Program, and the Taskforce for Regional Autotheft Prevention.
Cooley said that many of these programs have been replicated elsewhere in California and other states, and that several have received local, state and national innovation and excellence awards. He said that Baker was proud when the office received the Quality and Productivity Commission’s 2003 Bronze Eagle Award for the Drug Endangered Children Response Team, the 2005 Gold Eagle Award for Juvenile Offender Intervention Network and the 2006 Silver Eagle Award for the Fraud Interdiction Program.
Baker served on or held executive positions with the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the State Bar of California, the California District Attorney’s Association, the California Victim and Witness Coordinating Council, the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, the Los Angeles County Domestic Violence Council, the Los Angeles County Commission for Children’s Services, the Los Angels County Interagency Task Force on Rape and Sexual Abuse Examinations, the Interagency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, the California Consortium on the Prevention of Child Abuse and the Stanford Professional Women of Los Angeles.
She was presently serving as the 1st Vice Chair of the Quality and Productivity Commission Manager’s Network 2007 Executive Committee.
Baker is survived by her husband, Ed Aleks, sons Robert and Randall Aleks, their wives, and two grandchildren.
Copyright 2007, Metropolitan News Company