Sheri Bluebond ’82, J.D. ’85

What I remember most about UCLA was how wonderful it was to get a first-class education for an extremely reasonable price at a beautiful campus. I loved the campus, enjoyed the classes and got a lot out of the UCLA Law School with a $3,000 Visa bill instead of a $10,000 student loan.

My Alumni Scholarship helped me afford to go to UCLA, but it also gave me an affordable place to live. I was about 1,000 people down on the waiting list to get a dorm room and couldn’t afford an apartment. Because I was an Alumni Scholar, I got into the dorm my first year, which made all the difference and made my first year at college a truly enjoyable experience.

After graduating from UCLA, I was able to find employment quickly at a firm of my choice and quickly was able to purchase a home and amass some personal savings. Financially, my life would have been extremely different if I had been saddled with a significant amount of personal debt. I probably would not have been able to afford to leave the private sector to become a judge when I did and probably would not have been able to afford the ton of money I spent on fertility treatments in order to become the mother of my beautiful twins.

As for my decision to give back to UCLA, it is not the fact that others have been generous that inspires me to be generous – it is the knowledge that UCLA is deserving and has a need. Perhaps that’s the same thing.