NEAH BAY — Emma Dulik’s empathy is as abundant as her life experience.
As a judge in the Makah Tribal Court, she uses both. And though the 76-year-old Neah Bay native is in her 30th year ruling on criminal, civil and juvenile cases, she is anything but jaded.
On a recent Thursday, she finished court at about 4:30 p.m. and needed to unwind.
“We’re going to go for a ride,” she told a reporter.
Dulik drove out to where the Sooes River meets the Pacific Ocean, a place so untamed, so magnificent, it can bring tears to your eyes.
The waves, the froth and the big sky are a salve for a woman who’s had a tough day.
“I had to raise my voice” when a defendant stepped out of line, Dulik said. Being a judge means people are mad at you a lot of the time, she added.
So “you have to suck it up and say, ‘I’m doing my job.'”
On the other hand, there was a defendant who, on this day, vowed to enter a six-month treatment program for alcohol and other drug abusers.
If he completes the program, the man’s charges may be dropped, and he could avoid jail time. He might become one of the people Dulik watches get well.
She spoke sharply to him about his future — and “I really felt like he heard what I was saying,” Dulik added.
Time, of course, will tell.
In the years since she was appointed by the Makah Tribal Council in 1971, Dulik has seen a lot of suffering. She’s seen alcoholism visit misery on her community. And she has sought to help her people turn away from it, to start new lives.
Dulik is not a judge who hands down brusque rulings and then bangs her gavel — she scarcely uses the thing. She is known for talking to defendants not just about their offenses, but about their hopes, battered as they might be, for the future.
“I like to lecture them and try to point out what I see happening,” Dulik said. “We want to see you live and grow,” she tells her defendants.
“I like to point out: You’re going to have to start making better decisions for yourself. There are consequences when you break the law.”
Dulik herself has lived a life of hope. She married Kenny Jimmicum when she was 16 going on 17, and at 18, she gave birth to the first of 14 children.
One baby died at just 51 days old. But Rose, Ellen, Steve, Jack, Joe, Shirley, Barbara, Betsy, Donald and Annette grew up in Neah Bay, as their mother had. From her teens through her 20s and 30s, Dulik was a stay-at-home mom.
“My kids were my life,” she said.
But one day a neighbor, perhaps thinking she needed a break, told her, “You need to go for a walk.”
“I said, ‘Why?’ I didn’t have any problem with it. I didn’t feel like my children were a burden.”
Her first marriage, however, didn’t survive. After she and Jimmicum divorced, the mother of 10 fell in love with Michael Dulik. They married on Oct. 21, 1967, and then had three children of their own: Michael Jr., Anna and Chrissy, who was born in 1974, the year her mother turned 40.
Dulik’s judicial career had already begun three years before that, as she completed a long series of trainings.
She studied with the late professor Ralph Johnson, a noted scholar of Native American law at the University of Washington, and attended just about every course offered at the National Judicial College in Reno, Nev.
Her judge’s salary in those early years was $50 a day.
“I don’t have a law degree,” she said. But with her training and time in court, “I have enough hours to be two attorneys.”
In the past decade, Dulik has been stricken twice more by tragedy.
Her son, Jack Jimmicum, committed suicide, and her daughter, Barbara Jimmicum Greene, was killed in a drunken-driving incident. The losses, and her grief in their wake, have intensified Dulik’s compassion inside the courtroom.
“I don’t see myself as better than anyone,” she said. “I respect my people at the same level, as equals.”
Among her own family members — and she now has dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren — Dulik is a counselor. She has seen loved ones fall into alcohol abuse, and when she speaks of them, she weeps.
“It hurts,” Dulik said, taking off her glasses and bowing her head.
Yet her message to family members who are abusing drugs has remained the same, through the years: “I love you. I will always love you. But I don’t agree with what you’re doing.”
Dulik cares deeply for her community as well, said Marla Tolliver, the Makah Tribal Court clerk who has worked with her for four years.
“She cares for the people. She cares for our culture,” Tolliver said. “She is such a strong believer in helping people and making sure they get the treatment, the counseling they need.”
“I always have hope,” added Dulik. “I always say there isn’t a ‘bad’ kid out there. There is good” in the young person standing before her in court, “and we have to find it and help it grow.”
Dulik is part of a hardworking team of women, said Tolliver. Court administrator Jean Vitalis, deputy court clerk Nicole Dallos and the prosecutors and public defenders are all female.
Dulik works five days a week and is on call 24/7 for police officers needing search or arrest warrants. And though she is well past retirement age, the judge is not thinking about stepping down anytime soon.
“I like the feeling of satisfaction . . . if we even take one step that’s positive in a life,” she said.
“I want to see things better for my people. I want them to see life as something precious, something important, something worthwhile.
“I have an opportunity, as a judge, to do this.”