LoStracco Interview - Ashley Taylor

Nicole LoStracco has become a regular visitor on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University as a speaker. As a runner for the office of district attorney of Nacogdoches, LoStracco has become a known leader in the community.
She is well-dressed woman with a great sense of style. She wore a very nice black long sleeve shirt with a long pin stripe skirt with knee high black boots. She is married to James R. LoStracco and has two kids, Trey, 2, and Juliette, 4 but still maintains a criminal defense practice.

LoStracco was born in San Francisco, California and raised in Hawaii and Belgium. She received her law degree at Texas Tech University. Her family has a deep background of law. “My father is a lawyer and my godfather. I have a lot of law in my family”, she said. She actually graduated six months early in December and moved to Nacogdoches after graduation with her husband. With desperate need of a job she and her husband began to take all job offers. LoStracco began her first year of practice in Lufkin but did not like the commute. She began searching for other jobs in Nacogdoches but not many positions that she liked were open.

LoStracco began her journey of life in a place she did not see herself in but she made it work. She thought she would be in a family practice specializing in divorce. She said, “I found a spot open at the District Attorney’s Office but the position was not funded.” She worked as a prosecutor for three years on any case involving abused women. She quit working for the district attorney office in October of 2004 and opened her own criminal defense practice.

She is often asked how did she go from prosecuting to defending and she said, “A high 90 percent of cases end in plea bargaining so there is not much of a difference.” LoStracco did not know much about criminal defense and could only remember taking one class in criminal defense. Today she is her own manager and said, “It’s hard managing people under you.” But she knows if people are not doing their job as hard as it is they have to be fired.

As a woman and young lawyer organizations at SFA were interested in LoStracco’s insight of the system. Organizations began to call her up to make speeches at various events going on on the campus. She was one of the many speakers at the SFA’s Risk Management Training; she was given the topic sex, drugs and alcohol.
LoStracco explained why she thought she was chosen to speak. She said, “I’m one of the young lawyers in town. I seem to be more on the same level of students.” There were thousands of students in the assembly and she didn’t display any nervousness. With her knowledge of the system, it was easy for LoStracco to speak on the subject. She has dealt with many types of criminals and she also deals with many student cases. Many of her student cases deal with sex, drugs and alcohol.

Ten days after the training assembly a SFA student died of alcohol poisoning. She said, “People just don’t understand that you can die from alcohol. It was a tragedy. Clearly people don’t get it.”

Hazing is another subject that LoStracco deals with, which wasn’t a big problem in her days of college. LoStracco look at hazing cases through the parents’ point of view because even though college students are treated as adults they are still young.

LoStracco loves being her own manager but she began to notice that the numbers were down at the district attorney’s office. People began to tell her she should run for the opening at the office.

She said, “ It was not an idea that I came up with to run for office but people from the community came up to me telling me I should run.” So she decided to give it a try and she is running against Stephanie Stephens. If she is elected she will take office in January of 2009. The community was very concerned with what and where their tax dollars were going. She said, “The community basically nominated her for the position.”