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'Honorable' describes Louie Vega

And not just because the Alumni Hall of Famer is a judge

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 23^rd, 2020

Editor's note: This is the third of four 2020 Alumni Hall of Fame profiles.

During his 30 years on the bench, Judge Louie Vega has looked at how things are done and championed ways to do them better.

When young defendants wound up in his court, Vega looked hard at whether a learning experience was more appropriate than a juvenile hall sentence. When unresolved court cases were preventing some homeless residents from getting a driver’s license or job, he helped resolve them through Homeless Court.

And when he saw how important it was to help keep fractured families in-tact, he launched an annual celebration of the hard work parents put into regaining custody of their kids.

“My dad is the type of person who makes sure things are the way they are not because they’ve always been that way, but because they’re the way they should be,” said Vega’s daughter, Raquel Vega.

That hasn’t been just as a judge. It’s been as a helicopter crew chief during the Vietnam War, as the first non-white Kern County television news reporter, and as a teacher. In fact, Vega didn’t embark on the legal career he’s most known for until his 30s.

A 'gung-ho' guy

Vega is the oldest child of parents who met as teens working in a Hollister apricot shed. Vega spent his early years there, first in a little cabin with his mom and dad, then with his grandparents and 10 aunts and uncles because they lived closer to a nearby school, and then back with his parents next to a slaughterhouse.

“As a little 7-year-old I had free run of the slaughterhouse,” he said. “I could go anywhere. I could see anything I wanted to see.”

Louie and Carmen Vega with their son, Louie, in Hollister in 1949.

Vega’s father picked up work installing terrazzo floors in the Los Angeles area and the family, which then also included two younger sisters, moved there. They eventually settled in a two-bedroom house in Baldwin Park near East L.A.

At Baldwin Park High, Vega played trumpet and baritone in the band, competed in baseball and football and served in student government. It was a bit of a rough school and Vega landed in the dean’s office a few times for bad (though not too bad) behavior, experiences that later served him well as a juvenile court judge.

When he failed to make the baseball team at Mt. San Antonio College, Vega dropped out and joined the Army. It was 1967, and the Vietnam War was raging.

“My peers were all gung-ho kind of guys. We were tough guys,” said Vega. “We were going to go over there and take care of things.”

Vega trained to be a helicopter repairman. In Vietnam, his small size (5’6, about 120 pounds) made him the perfect fit for the back of an OH-6 helicopter, from which he scouted and smoked out enemy soldiers.

“We would draw the fire first, pop a smoke grenade, shoot back, and then the gunships would come in and shoot up the area,” Vega remembered. “Then we’d go back and see if they hit what we told them to shoot at.

“Sometimes we’d get shot at again, and then it was wash, rinse, repeat.”

Vega gets ready to go on a scouting mission from Camp Enari, Pleiku, South Vietnam in 1968.

Vega was in two helicopter crashes, one when the aircraft was shot at, one when the engine quit. He banged up his knees and suffered cuts and bruises. He earned a Purple Heart for his service, the combat portion of which ended after a year in January 1969.

When his Army duty was over, Vega returned to L.A. and pursued a radio career. In the morning he took classes at a broadcasting school in downtown Hollywood and in the afternoon and evening worked in a factory.

His first radio job was signing on the station and running the boards at KUTY in Palmdale. While there he learned of a job opening at KERO-TV in Bakersfield, and despite having no television experience went for it.

Vega read some copy, had the station call one of his instructors as a reference and accepted a trainee position. Over time he learned to film, write and edit stories on deadline and deliver sports news at the end of the broadcast.

When Vega first started out at KERO, he worked from 8 a.m. to midnight covering the news and reading sports headlines. When you’re 22, he quips, you can do that. Here he’s interviewing Bakersfield businessman and farmer Warren Carter in 1972.

Vega was the first non-white broadcaster on Kern County airwaves. He later learned KERO-TV in part hired him because its sale to McGraw-Hill was being held up by community complaints the station wasn’t hiring minorities.

Vega is grateful to those local activists, like Ralph Anthony and Ray Gonzales, for the opportunity their fight gave him because he was very green.

“I remember I had two coats at the time, and I would alternate them every other day,” Vega said. “And finally the general manager called me and said, ‘What kind of wardrobe do you have?’ They were coats I had since high school.

“…I was ready for radio. I wasn’t really ready for TV.”

Vega moved up to public affairs director producing a weekly show and all public service announcements. It was then he put his GI Bill to use and enrolled at CSUB.

Finding purpose

While working reduced hours at KERO-TV, Vega earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a teaching credential . For fun he played on CSUB’s club soccer team. Vega parlayed his education into a short teaching career in the Kern High School District, from 1978 to 1980, then re-evaluated his life again.

Despite having served his country, broken racial barriers in broadcasting and taken up teaching, Vega questioned whether he’d done anything worthwhile. So he entered law school at UCLA.

“I don’t know if it’s survivor’s guilt or whatever but when I got through Vietnam, I thought there had to be a reason,” Vega said. “You want to find a purpose for why you made it and others didn’t.”

At UCLA, Vega joined the Chicano Law Students Association, was editor of the Chicano Law Review and was an extern for a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge. He helped organize the law school’s first Latino symposium, which tackled big issues like redistricting, police misconduct and demographic changes.

“There was a lot of stuff going on and I just enjoyed it,” Vega said. “I took it all in.”

Louie Vega at his UCLA Law School graduation. — Vega graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 1983. Here he’s pictured with longtime friend and colleague Ralph Wyatt, a fellow Kern County Superior Court judge. UCLA’s La Raza Law Student Association honored Vega as alumnus of the year in 2013.

Vega returned to Bakersfield and became a Kern County public defender. On his first day he picked up his first defendant – a recent mental hospital patient charged with threatening some judges.

Vega took the misdemeanor case to trial and had a rough start, getting needled by the prosecutor and judge for arguing his case instead of previewing the evidence during his opening statement.

Turns out the defendant was drunk when he called 411 saying he needed to report what he believed were corrupt judges, and when connected to state police gave his name, address and phone number.

At trial, Vega asked a state investigator to recall the last time someone making a threat offered up all his personal details. He couldn’t. Then Vega pointed out that investigators waited several days before following up on the supposed threat.

“The jury went out and about 10 minutes later, came back with a verdict and I was waiting to be totally embarrassed,” Vega said. “They ended up finding him not guilty.”

Vega moved on to civil law. He’s most proud of pro bono work he did helping stop the County of Kern from building a juvenile justice center at Heritage Park in east Bakersfield. Area residents wanted the space preserved.

But Vega would make his biggest mark deciding cases, not arguing them.

On the bench

From 1990 to 2008, Vega was a Kern County court commissioner, deciding lower-level matters like traffic violations, collections and low-value personal injury suits.

Vega is sworn in as a Kern County Superior Court commissioner. He held the position for 18 years before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, appointed Vega, a Democrat, a full-fledged judge in 2008.

Attorneys must agree to have a commissioner decide their case, so commissioners must balance being independent with not upsetting people, said one of Vega’s close friends and colleagues, Judge Ralph Wyatt.

Some people can do it, some can’t, Wyatt said. Vega could.

“He was fair, his decisions were reasoned. He didn’t become embroiled in the matters that appeared before him,” Wyatt said. “Embroilments are a problem for a lot of people on the bench because you get in a position of power and you have to always be conscious of how you respond to people, and to stay impartial.”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Vega a Superior Court judge in 2008. Vega’s first long-term assignment was juvenile delinquency court, which appealed to him as someone who grew up in a “rough and tumble” neighborhood and so could relate to many of the young defendants.

“Where I grew up it was very important that you be tough or you’d end up being picked on,” he said. “So you learn to stand up for yourself. Sometimes that meant you got a bloody nose and somebody else got a bloody nose.”

It didn’t make him more lenient, Vega said, but it did make him more aware of the environments in which many young defendants grew up. And he came to court believing most of the kids weren’t bad, they just made bad decisions sometimes and it’s not the end of the world, he said.

Sometimes that resulted in alternative forms of adjudication. Vega once ordered a teenage girl to watch the movie “Les Miserables” and report back on its themes, particularly redemption.

Vega also started Family Reunification Day in Kern County, a ceremony attended by parents, children, social workers, attorneys and others that celebrates the hard work it takes to reunite families separated by child welfare officials and courts. The families also share their stories with the Board of Supervisors and local media to spread hope to others like them.

“This is our community saying, ‘We’re not going to let you guys fail, If you really want to stay together, we’re going to do what we can to help you,’” Vega said.

“…It also gives the kids a chance to see that other families have been through this, too.”

At Kern County’s first Family Reunification Day, in 2014, Avonda Jones (middle) and her son Tomontea Brown were among the families celebrated for reuniting. Vega is at left. Photo courtesy The Bakersfield Californian.

Kern County Human Services Director Dena Murphy said some in her department were skeptical that families would want to go public with their stories.

“He was absolutely right that some people were so very proud of what they had done and that they had formed such close relationships with their attorneys, their social workers and the judges,” she said of Vega. “And they wanted to talk about that, what it meant in their life and that they’d been able to put their families back together and become stronger families.”

Vega has also presided over collaborative courts where the homeless, including homeless veterans, can resolve minor cases preventing them from getting a job or a driver’s license. Homeless Court is held every couple months at the Salvation Army, Bakersfield Homeless Center or Rescue Mission. Veterans Court is held at the annual Veterans Stand Down at Stramler Park.

Judges, prosecutors and public defenders participate. The defendants are often recovering substance abusers who need to be reached where they are.

Vega successfully argued to save Homeless Court during the 2010 budget crisis by showing how it saves taxpayers money, Wyatt said.

“We were on the chopping block and he convinced the courts to keep it going,” Wyatt said. “Now we have people in place who, when he retires and I retire, can continue on.”

He can name that tune

The Vegas are a small family. Raquel is the only child of Louie and his wife, Gloria. And so they are very close, Raquel said.

Together they both like staying home with their animals and traveling. Favorite spots are Monterey and Hawaii. If Vega were to retire today, Raquel said, he’d probably hole up in a little house in Hawaii and read books. He’s an avid reader.

Gloria and Louie Vega pose with their daughter, Raquel, at the November announcement of Vega’s inclusion in the 2020 CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame class.

Asked what people don’t know about the well-known Vega, both Raquel and Wyatt said his encyclopedic knowledge of music. Give him a lyric and he can rattle off the song title, who sang it, who wrote it, when it was recorded, where it landed on the charts and the details of any disputes over royalties, Wyatt said.

“I did finally get him on one,” Wyatt joked, “something from ‘The Lion King.’”

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Footnotes

Story by Christine Bedell, senior alumni engagement specialist

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FootNotes

Story by Christine Bedell, senior alumni engagement specialist

CSUB celebrates alumni during Homecoming Week

'Honorable' describes Louie Vega

And not just because the Alumni Hall of Famer is a judge

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FootNotes

Check out top photos from recent events

March 4th, 2026

April 9 event now features two tracks, student ticket

Gift will establish Wonderful Scholars Center in Rohan Building

Dahna Stowe and sister Dorie Gutierrez donating $125,000 over five years

Janie Flores to be inducted into Alumni Hall of Fame

March 4^th, 2026