PEABODY — In the months after 9/11, Stephen Patten was fresh out of Suffolk University Law School and looking for his niche in the legal profession.
He thought he might use his legal skills to help his country, so Patten, who grew up in Peabody, applied for the Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps.
He didn't get in then and went on to work as an assistant district attorney in Essex County. A few years after that, he quit to become a police officer in Essex.
But Patten, 34, missed the law.
And then he learned about the death of Stephen Fortunato, 25, a Beverly man serving in the Army infantry who was killed last year by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. That sealed his decision to try again for a JAG commission.
This time, with a background in both law and law enforcement, he got in.
"They told me they liked the combination," said Patten, whose parents, Bruce and Ann, still live in Peabody.
Meanwhile, Andrea Saglimbene was following a different path to the same place.
Growing up in Topsfield, Andrea Lunn, as she was then known, was a standout athlete who also served as her class president at Masconomet Regional High School. She always envisioned becoming a lawyer and had also learned about the ROTC program at the University of Delaware.
She ended up going to law school at the University of Maine and then, soon after graduating, was commissioned.
Though they grew up just a few miles apart, Patten and Saglimbene never knew each other until they met in Afghanistan, where both are now stationed as part of the 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg.
"Afghanistan has history of corruption in its legal system," Patten said. "What we're doing is helping establish a system of laws that is applied to everyone."
Rights Americans take for granted, such as the right to a fair trial, are new concepts where he has been working, Patten said.
Patten said what he and other lawyers stationed there are trying to develop is a system "that we take for granted in the United States, to be able to walk into a courthouse and know that if the law and the facts are on our side, we'll get a fair outcome."
It's something that Patten believes he will be able to look back on with pride.
"It's the most amazing thing," he said. "I'm seeing almost the birth of a justice system. It's just that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Patten was also recently assigned to prosecute two cases, one of them involving an involuntary manslaughter charge against a soldier who allegedly mishandled his weapon, as well as a sexual assault case in Kuwait.
Patten landed in Afghanistan in September. It was tough to leave behind his family and his fiancée, Lindsey Dulkis, who is also a lawyer.
"I knew that deployment is a part of the job," he said. "It's a reality of the job, and although I was apprehensive about the idea of deploying, it's really emerged as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Saglimbene is part of another major legal undertaking — restoring confidence in the system for detaining suspected terrorists and war criminals.
"I'm actually part of the team (that advises) the detainee review board," Saglimbene said "We're trying to become more transparent and provide better feedback and information to both detainees and the public."
While it's a huge challenge, it's also "pretty exciting," said Saglimbene, 27.
"The JAGs are a pretty close-knit family," she said. "We get fielded out to different areas of the law, and then we come together once a week."
She was excited to meet another North Shore native at one of the weekly meetings.
"It's pretty special to get to reminisce about home and share the experience of where you grew up," said Saglimbene, who is due to return home for a visit this month.
While her parents, Don and Sue Lunn, have moved away from the North Shore, her grandmother, Shirley Hanlon, still lives in Beverly, and she's looking forward to a visit to Bill and Bob's Famous Roast Beef in Salem.
