MELINDA VOLMER: I would first like to say how honored I am to be presenting this award to the next Distinguished Service Award recipient. I cannot imagine anyone who is more worthy of this award than this year's DSA recipient. When I started writing this speech, the pronoun "she" kept coming up on the page. So here is your first clue. She is a female. Sorry, guys, there's just too few of you.

This year's recipient has been an official court reporter, a freelance court reporter, an ACRA president, she is a merit writer, a certified realtime reporter, and now for the really important achievement, she is a spelling bee winner.

In talking with many of the recipient's colleagues and friends, there were certain words that just kept coming up over and over again: Intelligent, driven, motivated, tenacious, dependable, fierce, creative, voracious, Luke Skywalker, Appletini. Well, maybe I ought to leave the adjectives and just go on to the rest of it.

I have seen this year's recipient stand up in front of a roomful of judges, lawyers, court reporters, court administrators and declare that as president of ACRA, she must make sure that she is ensuring the best for all court reporters in this state. The number of hours this year's recipient has spent to protect all court reporters' interests are just too numerous to count and often to the detriment of her own business. I truly believe without the endeavors to ensure court reporter jobs, we would be facing many other hurdles than we do today.

Now, if I haven't given you enough information as to who this year's DSA recipient is, let me give you some personal information about her that's not related to court reporting. She can zero in on the best discotheques in Cancun without ever having been there. She can navigate her way on the subways of New York like she was born there. She gave me this belt. Still not enough? Well, then, let me just introduce you to my good friend and this year's well-deserved Distinguished Service Award winner, Leslie Foldy.

LESLIE FOLDY: Gee, I'm so shocked. There was a real fraud perpetrated on me. I was told someone else was going to be here, so I've been so worried: Are they coming, are they coming?

Oh, gosh. I don't know what to say. I'm just shocked, really shocked. I guess the one thing that I would say, and this sounds really overly dramatic, this is meant for everybody who has ever done anything. I have a client who has a little catch phrase, a quote that he puts at the end of all his e-mails, and I really think it's a good one. It's something like: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

And it's so true. You know, I guess like four or five years ago, I heard a judge give a talk at one of our conventions, and I was so blown out of the water that I was in the restroom cursing under my breath, and one of the reporters came in and looked at me like: What are you doing? But I was just so mortified that something that I thought was just not right was going to be occurring.

So I don't know, so I thought, well, maybe I guess it's time to get involved. And I would just encourage everybody, because you know, we're in this boat together. If we all row at the same time, we can do great things, and it's just a real honor, and I appreciate it. Thanks to everybody.

MELINDA VOLMER: If I could just bear your indulgence one more minute. While we realize the work Leslie has been doing has been for the entire court reporting community as a whole, the Maricopa County officials realize that the battle that has been fought has been in our backyard. So on behalf of the Maricopa County Superior Court court reporters and due to all the work that Leslie has done on their behalf, we would like to present you with this gift.