When June Schnacke was appointed district attorney for Santa Cruz County in 1947, deputy DA John McCarthy, who had coveted the post, quit in protest. Ever the persuasive lawyer, she convinced him to return. And when Schnacke lost her second bid for election in 1954, McCarthy, along with the other two deputies, resigned -- out of loyalty to his boss.
The first woman to serve as a district attorney in California, Schnacke died June 6 of heart failure at her home in Hillsborough, Calif. She was 80.
From childhood on, Schnacke was ahead of her time. She entered kindergarten at age 4 because she wanted to be with her older sister, and went on to become one of the youngest graduates of Stanford Law School at a time when only 3 percent of law school students were women. "She was very feisty and strong-willed -- crusty but soft in the middle," says longtime friend and family attorney Bill Locke-Paddon, '64. She even took the bar exam while bedridden from back surgery.
After law school, Schnacke took a job as a deputy district attorney in Santa Cruz, handling criminal cases and drafting the county's first planning ordinance. Just four years later, she was elevated to the top job when the DA resigned. Schnacke was re-elected to the post in 1950. "She was a good boss and a very capable attorney," says Jim Paxton, '50, JD '52. "She had three male deputies, and we were all very happy with her."
After she lost the 1954 election -- to Charlie Moore, '49, JD '51, who was forced from office six months later because of a gambling scandal -- Schnacke became a deputy U.S. attorney in San Francisco, where she met and married colleague Robert Schnacke. She retired from active practice in 1962 and became an avid supporter of San Francisco arts organizations. In 1998 she donated $1 million for the construction of a Catholic high school in Watsonville, Calif.
Schnacke and her sister, Mary Ann Radovich, inherited their parents' pippin apple orchard in 1940, and Schnacke took over its management after Radovich died in 1991. She was still making regular trips to the Watsonville orchard at the time of her death. Schnacke died six years to the day after her husband, who also died at the age of 80.
