Margaret G. Sandelin, Pioneer Through Family And Law Career

Margaret Gaskill Sandelin, a stylish career woman fond of art and antiquities, was proud to be descended from the earliest white settlers of Washington's Methow Valley.

She was a pioneer too, but in a different way: She was one of Washington's first female criminal defense attorneys.

Criminal litigation, and working in social-welfare outside the court, proved to be her passion. She believed many youthful offenders would rehabilitate themselves if given good experiences on parole. She helped many find jobs and housing.

"If the money now used in the operation of penitentiaries could be devoted to the rehabilitation of their inmates, except those from which society must be protected, our prison population would drop a great deal," she told The Seattle Times in 1960.

Mrs. Sandelin, a Camano Island resident since 1990, died Saturday (Oct. 25) of cancer. She was 76.

"She was really good with young people," said her husband, D. Scott Sandelin, to whom she was married for 20 years. "She was the one that drafted the driver's education law in the 1960s" requiring young people to have a driver's education course to get a license.

Born in Philadelphia but reared in Seattle, she had decided by the sixth grade to be a lawyer.

"I used to think studying law was my own idea," she said. "But later I found my father had been working on me to do so all my young life because that was his ambition for me."

She graduated from Franklin High School in 1939 and worked as a Boeing draftsperson to pay for her University of Washington schooling.

Mrs. Sandelin not only earned her law degree and passed her Washington State Bar Association exams in 1947, but numbered among only a few female law-school graduates.

This past summer, when the bar association honored her 50 years of law practice, she noted that half of today's law graduates are women.

Her first taste of criminal litigation came in 1949. Some women worked as prosecuting attorneys, but she represented criminal defendants when there were no public defenders.

She had to research, interview and bring cases to trial. She hated plea-bargains.

"Margaret was firm but fair when dealing with her attorney opponents," said her husband. "Many were deceived by her graciousness and open-handedness. Those who tried to exploit these traits soon learned there was fire in the well."

Mrs. Sandelin also was the second woman lawyer appointed as a judge pro tempore in King County Superior Court.

The past 20 years she practiced law with her husband, handling probate conflicts.

She enjoyed travel to Paris, where she had witnessed the student riots of 1968. She also traveled to Mexico, where she studied Spanish at local universities.

Other survivors include her children Margaret Dahlen of Eugene, Ore., and Herb Gaskill Jr., Lilliwaup, Mason County; her brothers Fred Jenkins, Sequim, and Bill Jenkins, Renton; and her sisters Jean Lucker, Seattle, and Joan Carlson, Fall City.

Services are at 2 p.m. tomorrow at Butterworth's Funeral Chapel, 300 E. Pine St., Seattle.

Carole Beers' phone message number is 206-464-2391. Her e-mail address is: cbee-new@seatimes.com