ORLANDO, Fla. – Tarlika Nuñez-Navarro recalled that it wasn’t always easy growing up in the small rural town of Lake Placid because of the way she looked.
“I wanted them to identify with me and others and understand that you do not have to look a particular way to be whatever you want to be when you grow up,” Nuñez-Navarro said. “I was the only Hispanic in my elementary school back then which is really astonishing looking around now. I didn’t fit in, and I was certainly picked on and ridiculed as a child for the color of my skin.”
At the start of her career, she said she felt a calling to help children who feel like an outsider achieve their dreams and decided to write a book.
“I started reading early on in my career when I was a lawyer to Lawyers for Literacy, which is a program throughout the state of Florida where we go into elementary schools and middle, and we read to children,” she said. “I noticed that we were reading books that had nothing to do with the law or what lawyers do or judges do, so I just figured that I would write my own book.”
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The children’s book, “Believe,” which she co-wrote with a close friend from her law school days, tells the story of a young girl who learns to believe in herself with support from her “abuela” — or grandmother.
“Both of my grandmothers were matriarchs. They ran the household. They were strong women, both my paternal and maternal, but it’s not limited to my abuelas,” Nuñez-Navarro said. “I want children to always feel included, and I want them to feel like they have a place here. And that, of course, coming to America even if their parents you know aren’t from here, that they can be anything that they want to be.”
However, the 9th circuit judge said it was her father who inspired her to become a lawyer.
“He was a small-town doctor in Lake Placid, Florida. We would debate, and we would talk about issues growing up, and he would always say, ‘You should be a lawyer because you argue with me a lot.’ So I think he planted the seed for that. I saw him servicing his community, and he always told me, ‘Whatever you do, make sure it’s about service,” she recalled.
In 2018, Nuñez-Navarro was appointed judge to the 17th Circuit, and in 2021, appointed to the 9th circuit in Orange County, becoming the first Colombian American to hold a circuit court seat on Florida’s 9th and 17th judicial circuits.
“Certainly, I stand on the shoulders of all the women who have come before me, all the mentors that have helped me get to where I am. But I do think that we have to work a little bit harder and prepare. We’re always underestimated, which I embrace at this point in my career,” she said.
Despite the challenges along the way to the criminal bench, the graduate of St. Thomas University said staying true to her integrity is what’s shaped her to be the type of judge she always wanted to be.
“Integrity is everything, you know. Your reputation is everything. You’re only as good as certainly your last case. My father and my mother brought me up with strong, strong morals and having strong boundaries,” the judge said.
When she’s not on the criminal bench, she’s inspiring children in elementary and middle schools, and foster children to believe in themselves.
“When I go into schools and I speak to the children, I always say, ‘Tell me what you want to be when you grow up,’ and a lot of them say, ‘Well I want to be a doctor, but I’m not smart enough,’ or ‘I want to be a judge, but I don’t look like a judge.’ I hope that they believe in themselves. I hope that they can find someone who believes in them, whether it’s a mentor or an abuela or their mother or father,” she said. “We want them to know that they, too, can be anything that they want to be. Regardless of their circumstances of their background of their heritage because this is America, the greatest place in the world.”
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