LoStracco Interview - Jordan Lea Smith

On Sept. 24 Nicole LoStracco walked on the stage to talk to thousands of Stephen F. Austin students about “sex, drugs, and alcohol.” She talked about the importance of being aware of each of these things and how to handle situations where they were included. Ten days later, SFA student Nikolas Gallegos died of alcohol poisoning.

“I had the fun topics,” LoStracco said. She thinks that those topics are things that students like to listen to rather than fire safety, harassment and hazing, some of the other topics discussed at SFA’s Risk Management Training.

Discussing sex can be hard with some groups of people, but on a college campus it is an important thing. With date rape rates being one of the highest crime rates on college campuses, it needs to be talked about. LoStracco not only discussed this topic at the Risk Management Training, but also at the Kappa Alpha fraternity’s date rate prevention seminar. She says, “If someone is so drunk they can’t consent, it’s rape.”

Drugs and alcohol fall on the same plane with her. When she was a teenager problem with these substances were taken much more lightly than they are now. “You sorta got your hands slapped.” she said, “Now, nobody sorta lets you slide.” It is a big deal if a college student is caught in possession of drugs or alcohol. Even though it probably won’t ruin someone’s permanent record they have to go through all sorts of procedures and those aren’t cheap.

If police find even the slightest hint of alcohol on a minor’s breath they will arrest him or her. Their parents will have to bail them out of jail and then many court appearances will follow. Court and lawyer fees can add up to a high price.

LoStracco, an exuberant speaker, is 37 years old and runs her own criminal defense practice. She is married to James R. LoStracco and they have two children, Juliette and Trey. She was born and raised in San Fransico, California. When she was two her father was transferred to Belgium. They stayed there for five years.

LoStracco said, “It was a good basis for other travel I did later on.” They moved back to San Fransico and lived there until she graduated from high school. LoStracco then moved to Oakland to attend Mills College, a liberal arts women’s university. When she moved to college her parents moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. LoStracco spent many Christmas breaks and summers on the sunny beaches of Hawaii. She also spent 18 months in Spain for college.

When she was getting ready to graduate from Mills College she started applying for law school. She got accepted to many schools, but chose Texas Tech University in Lubbock. “Having a boyfriend from Amarillo helped make that decision,” she said. Ironically that relationship didn’t work out, but she meet James LoStracco. James LoStracco was a Nacogdoches native so when it came time for him to graduate and move back LoStracco didn’t want to be too far away from him so she hurried along with her schooling and graduated earlier in order to move to Nacogdoches.

One would think that after all the travel she had done, moving to little old Nacogdoches would be a big step for her. She said, “I never saw myself as a city girl.” She grew up riding horses, so she knew she could handle the move.

After they were married Nicole LaStracco began her search for a practice to join. “You’re pretty much going to go where the niche is,” she said about finding a law firm to join in Nacogdoches. She wound up in a family law firm in Lufkin but quit after one year because she didn’t want to commute.

When coming back to Nacogdoches to look for another job the only opening was in the District Attorney’s office working under Tim James. She handled the violence against women’s act and ended up specializing in child’s sexual assault cases. “It’s a real, real satisfying case to prosecute with,” she said. She stayed with the District Attorney’s office for eight years and during
that time had her first child. In October 2004 she left and opened her own practice.
LoStracco said that she gets a lot of questions like, “How can you go from prosecuting people for all those years and then defend people?” She said that it’s just more fulfilling and more along the lines of what she thought she wanted to do.
Even though she loves running her own practice she is running for District Attorney in the upcoming election. She said she feels like she needs to go back to the DA’s office for several reasons. There are some decisions being made that she thinks could be made differently. Another reason is that the win rate in cases has dropped from in the 80s to the 50s. “That’s a problem for the community,” she said.
She is running against the incumbent, who is also running on the Republican ticket. What that means is that since the Democratic Party doesn’t have a candidate that the district attorney for Nacogdoches County will be decided by the primary election in March 2008.
LoStracco has started up a new program where she will attend meetings with groups on campus to talk to them about handling different situations correctly. The program is different from just telling students what not to do, it is more like a “now that you’re busted” type of thing or “if you’ve been in trouble before, how to clean up your record.”
She is friends with SFA’s Dr. Scott and Beverly Farmer and is also “relatively approachable” so she will continue to be asked to return to SFA to speak to students on topics such as “sex, drugs, and alcohol.”