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Don Quick

Don Quick has served as the District Attorney for Adams and Broomfield counties since 2005. On August 28, 2008, Quick was sitting down to celebrate his birthday with a slice of cake when he received a phone call from Denver Police. That was when he found out that one of his chief deputy district attorneys, Sean May, had been shot to death in his backyard, coming home from work.

May’s murder remains unsolved. May 14 will mark the third year that attorneys and others in the community will participate in the Sean May Memorial Run/Walk at Barr Lake State Park. The run/walk honors May and benefits his family and the 17^th Judicial District Access to Justice Committee. Funds from the race in part helped the committee open the Self-Help Resource Center at the Adams County Justice Center. It opened Jan. 5 and provides computers, information, and staff to help people with legal procedural questions.

Quick recently sat down with Sara Crocker to talk about Sean May and the memorial run created in May’s  honor. For more information about the run/walk, please visit www.seanmaymemorialrun.org.

Tell us about Sean May.

Sean May

Sean May had been with our office for about seven years. He had great credentials; he could have done whatever he wanted and did. He went to Stanford undergraduate and U.Va. [University of Virginia] Law School. He was at law firm downtown and then decided that he wanted to both get into public service and in the courtroom, so he started at the DA’s office. He had just been promoted to a chief deputy, which are our section heads. His particular section was the New Lawyers. He really loved teaching and training new lawyers. He had just been in that job about two and a half months at the time that he was murdered. [He was] just a very optimistic, very positive young man. [His wife] was six months pregnant at the time of his murder, expecting their first child.

Sean was kind of the smart nerd growing up, had kind of a quirky sense of humor, and was very self-effacing for someone as smart as he was. He didn’t take himself too seriously and could laugh at himself pretty well, which is good because other people in a DA’s office will laugh at you, so it’s good trait to be able to laugh at yourself and keeps you with the crowd and not being lonely.

[He was a] very good trial lawyer; I’ve given him some important cases to prosecute and he had always done well with them. He had just finished a murder case six months to a year before [his death], which was a very challenging and difficult case and he had done great on it.

He was very bright; could have done whatever he wanted to in law and did, and chose to go into public service.

How has your office been doing since Sean’s death?

Obviously the first year was very, very rough.  We deal with homicide on a regular basis—right now we have 20 pending murder case prosecutions going on—still no matter how much experience you have, it’s still different when it’s one of your own.

During the first year, everybody was obviously very concerned for Sean’s wife and the baby. There’s some people that were good friends of theirs and they’ve kind of been the liaison between our office and Sean’s wife. It’s never really gone and we don’t want it to be. It’s a hole that we don’t want everybody to think it’s ever going to be filled. So, one group has put together the Sean May Run, another group put together our training room. We’ve got our terrific training facility up there –[it seats]  80 persons, drop-down screens, and everything – and we renamed it the Sean May Training Room in his honor because that was such a focus of his life, training the new lawyers.

We obviously have implemented some new security measures to try to keep people as safe as possible, but at the end of the day, we’re walking across the parking lot to the courthouse, we’re leaving the office, sometimes on weekends, and there’s nothing you can do to make yourself completely safe. But, we’re a little more vigilant.

What I found really supportive, for me anyway, was the fact that no one left the office for nine or 10 months. With a government office, you have some turnover because of salary being lower and those kinds of things, but for almost the first year after Sean’s murder no one left the office and I think that shows the people’s support for each other and the support for the team that they have. I couldn’t have been more proud of the office over the last three years, but especially the year following Sean’s death.

Why was the run/walk created as a way to remember and honor Sean?

It really has two purposes. The first purpose is to make sure other people remember Sean’s legacy as much as we do. For those that know him, even the new deputies that don’t know him, every day they walk into the training room and they get a chance to remember and ask questions about Sean. But also, it’s good for the community to remember Sean May. The proceeds help Sean’s family, so it’s one of those things that we know we’ll never forget, and we’re hoping that the law enforcement and legal communities don’t forget either.

Have you run in the race before? What did you enjoy most about it?

I’ve done it every year. I’m not sure at this pace whether I run it or jog anymore. For folks that don’t know and have not been to Barr Lake, Barr Lake is a hidden treasure in the metro area. People don’t realize that 20 minutes northeast of downtown there is a dirt path that goes around a lake that has a bald eagle reserve, it has cottonwoods; last time I ran there were deer across the canal. It’s just a beautiful spot. The only reason I have any reservations about letting people know more about it is that when we have time at lunch, we’ll sneak over there and go for warm runs. It’s so un-crowded that I almost hate to get the publicity out. I can’t imagine – and I’ve done a lot of runs in the metro area – that there are runs that have the landscape that Barr Lake does. Plus, the majority of the run is all on a dirt trail and when you have 50-year-old knees, it’s good to have a run on the dirt. It’s for a good cause, but it’s also an amazing venue.

How has the legal community responded to Sean’s death and to the race?

We’ve been really pleased that each year [the run] seems to get more and more involvement from outside Adams and Broomfield counties. We’re glad the Colorado Bar Association is making it a focus to inform more people and publicize the event. We’ve been really surprised with the level of support we’ve had in the community, and if people are interested either individually or put together teams of runners from law firms or law offices, then I think that would just further add more enjoyment to the run.  Not that trial lawyers are competitive, it’s always been an experience that I’ve had that a certain percentage are, so if you add a level of competition to it, between law firms or between offices, that’s great.