“It was just like, you know - this is not a threat to public safety here,” he said. He couldn’t understand why he had to prosecute so many low-level drug cases when there were violent crimes and other threats to public safety that required attention. That experience shaped him politically as well. He took it, finding himself working in one of the few multi-story buildings in the county seat, McArthur. Then he got an offer from the Vinton County prosecutor’s office in southern Ohio. He graduated from Capital around the time of the financial meltdown a decade ago, and he and his fellow newly minted lawyers found themselves in one of the worst environments in which to find a new job.
Riffle, driven by his mother’s hard work, his intelligence and his determination to have an easier life than his mother had, took advanced-placement classes in high school, studied hard and then headed to Ohio State University and the Capital University Law School, aided by federal, need-based Pell Grants and considerable college debt. Riffle recalls her coming home from Red Lobster and doing multiplication flashcards and spelling flashcards. It doesn’t comport with the idea of America that I hear politicians tell me all the time on TV.”Įven as she worked, Judy Riffle focused on her boy. “Just watching her work and work and work, and still for us not to be able to ever get ahead, just felt unfair to me,” he said.
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But even two jobs weren’t enough, and the social safety net, including the free lunch program at her son’s school, were key to the family’s survival.
To make ends meet, Judy Riffle worked at Red Lobster and had a second job at Consolidated Warehouse, the Big Lots supplier. Riffle spent his early years in Johnson City, Tennessee, but he and his mother moved to Columbus when he was 13 to be closer to her parents.