Commentary: Saying farewell to O.C.'s fighter for 'los otros'

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With his large build, booming voice and suits as sharp as his mind, Federico Sayre commanded every room he entered.For nearly 40 years as an attorney, he used that presence to fight for the maligned like few others.He offered pro bono legal aid to farm worker groups in the Central Valley and won headline-making settlements for police brutality victims in Orange County, from Latina immigrants to white supremacists.

In Los Angeles, he was part of the team that won Rodney King a $3.8-million civil settlement against the city.He represented the families of Ezell Ford, shot to death by Los Angeles police officers, and David Ordaz Jr., shot to death by an L.A.

County sheriff’s deputy, spurring calls for reform at both agencies.“I have one word for what young lawyers should do: It’s justice,” Sayre told the Orange County Register in 2006.“I have to fight for justice.”I’d always joke with him whenever we ran into each other in courthouses or at press conferences, asking what was the next righteous case he was working on.

He frequently would go to community open houses and make himself available to anyone who needed legal advice and was as free with his checkbook to financially support various causes as he was with his opinion about the politics of the day.But as I talked to mourners at Sayre’s funeral at his home parish of St.

Cecilia Church in Tustin, Calif., on Monday, I realized that his fight for justice manifested in many other ways.Attorneys Henry Brown and Tim Black were among the first people to show up.They worked alongside Sayre in the early 2000s, when he made national headlines after settling a wrongful death lawsuit for $2 million on behalf of the family of a man killed by a tow truck driver who tested positive for meth.“Fred was a very gracious, generous man and made sure that people who didn’t get a break in life got a fair shot in the courtroom,” ...