Join the University Sunrise Rotary Club for a program featuring Founding Members Lee Raaen and Joseph Thomas.
The program will be presented on Zoom on Thursday morning with the Zoom line opening at 7 a.m. The formal meeting including the program runs from 7:30-8:30 a.m. No registration is required, and the program is free.
The meeting will be available via Zoom. Click here to join the meeting Thursday morning. The Zoom line will open shortly after 7 a.m.
Lee Raaen is a Founding Member of the University Sunrise Rotary Club. He has been a Washington State lawyer for over 42 years.
He serves as a Hearing Examiner for cities in Western Washington including Kent, Des Moines, Mukilteo, Lacy, and several others. He has often been appointed as an arbitrator for the King County Superior Court. He also serves as an expert witness in attorney fee dispute litigation.
Today, his practice consists primarily of civil litigation (attorney’s fee disputes, plaintiff’s personal injury, business and real property litigation).
Joseph Thomas is also a founding member of our club. Today, he live in Mexico and is a recently graduated lawyer. At the time of the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. St. Helens, Joseph Thomas was the public information specialist for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest based in Seattle. He had previous volcanic experience from planning the Forest Service response for the potential eruption of Mt. Baker at the head of the Skagit River. That would have impacted the Puget Sound area, Bellingham, Vancouver and the British Columbia growing area as well as Vancouver Island. It gave him the experience before the Mt. St. Helens eruption of working with the seismology and volcanology scientists at the University of Washington.
As well, during his previous years as a paratrooper and Public Information Officer of the 82d Airborne Division, he had parallel experience in events with wide national and international attention. He as well, graduated from the Defense Department´s specialty course for such officers, called DINFOS.
He applied those skills as the information manager for the Forest Service’s Regional wildfire fighting team and as an instructor for training information specialists at the national wildfire center in Boise, Idaho.
There are only four American Citizens in Mexico now with the ability to practice law in Mexico, and presently, Joseph is the only one known living the Valley of México that has 100,000 Americans living there full time and approximately 2 million in the country.
Joseph has current cases dealing with recovery of American citizenship and other issues impacting American Citizens.