In Memoriam: Lucinda Sikes

We are heartbroken at the news that CALPIRG Education Fund Board Member Lucinda Sikes passed away suddenly this Sunday. 

Our love goes out to Bob Shireman, Lucinda’s husband and PIRG alum, and their family. We offer our sympathies as well as to her many friends and colleagues at the Berkeley Law School, where Dean Erwin Chemerinsky called her “the heart and soul of our legal writing program”; her friends and former colleagues at Public Citizen, where she fought in the courts to open government records and protect consumers, including one case [Doctors Associates v. Casarotto (1996)] that reached the U.S. Supreme Court; her fellow alumni from Harvard Law School, where Lucinda earned her degree in 1989; and of course, her many friends at PIRG, where, as a U.S. PIRG consumer advocate, she testified before Congress and was a pioneer in crafting and releasing our annual toy safety reports, and where she was a CALPIRG student chapter leader at UC Berkeley. Lucinda served as a member of the CALPIRG Education Fund board of directors for many years, and we are grateful for her time and energy on our board as well as the boards of our allies at the Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS) and the Consumer Federation of California. 

Some people cross your path and move on. Some stay in your orbit, keeping in touch and staying close as your lives bring you to new and different places. So many of us were blessed to have Lucinda remain part of our lives. We’ll miss her so much.

Authors

Emily Rusch

Vice President and Senior Director of State Offices, The Public Interest Network

Emily is the senior director for state organizations for The Public Interest Network. She works nationwide with the state group directors for PIRG and Environment America to help them build stronger organizations and achieve greater success. Emily was the executive director for CALPIRG from 2009-2021, overseeing a myriad of CALPIRG campaigns to protect public health, protect consumers in the marketplace, and promote a robust democracy. Emily works in our Oakland, California, office, and loves camping, hiking, gardening and cooking with her family.