When Sarah Mickelson left Soldotna for college three years ago, she was itching to be somewhere bigger.
Three years later, Mickelson is wrapping up her finals in her last ever semester of undergrad in El Paso, Texas. And she’s a newly minted Truman Scholar — a prestigious award for graduating college students with an interest in public service.
Mickelson plans on using that money to jumpstart her career in law, which she said will take her back to the same state she really wanted to leave as a senior in high school.
“I’m just excited to go back to Alaska, once I’m done,” she said. “I can’t wait to go back.”
Mickelson was one of 62 students nationwide to get a Truman Scholarship this year, picked from over 700 candidates.
The scholarship comes with $30,000 in funding. She’ll use her slice of funds to go to law school, and plans to become a public defender in Anchorage.
“A few people in my family have utilized the service,” she said. “So I’ve always been aware of that field.”
Mickelson didn’t go to college with the intent of studying law.
She graduated from Soldotna High school right as the pandemic started, in 2020, and started at the University of Texas at El Paso in online courses.
“I thought I wanted to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. But then I took one course and I was like, you know, this isn’t really my thing,” she said.
That first semester, she was also enrolled in an introductory political science course, which did pique her interest. And her pull toward a career in law was solidified when she met a local public defender from the El Paso County Public Defender’s Office and started interning there, last fall.
She said they see all sorts of cases in El Paso — a city of almost 680,000 people.
“And it’s just been really interesting to sit down and see what a public defender actually does,” Mickelson said. “What is plea bargaining? What does the paperwork look like? What does a jury spreadsheet look like for the jury selection process?”
She finds that jury selection process particularly interesting.
“There is a lot of time and thought that goes into — ‘OK, who do I want on my jury?’” she said.
Chuck Boehmer is a political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. He said Mickelson’s knowledge of the criminal justice system in her home state made her stand out in her scholarship application.
“From growing up in Alaska, she’s very familiar with some of the inequities with some of the jails, prisons, and programs within them — that need for some reform or extra resources in the criminal justice system there,” he said.
Mickelson said she’d like to work on righting some of those inequities in her career, with a focus on rehabilitation. Alaska’s recidivism rate is among the highest in the country, at around 60%.
Mickelson said rehabilitation is about giving people in prison a chance — for example, through education.
“So that way, when they get out of prison, they have something to work toward,” she said. “That’s something I’d like to work on.”
Mickelson — Zooming in from an air conditioned room on the El Paso campus — said she’s in the thick of finals, this week.
After graduation later this month, she plans on attending law school in the Lower 48. That’s before making her way back up north — to a state whose pace and quiet she says she’s come to appreciate.
