MIAMI, FL — Long before Ariana Fajardo Orshan got on “somebody’s radar screen” and was nominated by President Trump to become South Florida’s first female U.S. attorney, she was still a Hialeah girl at heart trying to decide what she wanted to do with her life. Her grandfather was a lawyer in Cuba and her great aunt was a judge. If there was a family business, that was it.
But “it didn’t go well with my [high school] counselor. I’m not a great test taker. My SAT score was not particularly high,” South Florida’s top federal prosecutor confided at her downtown Miami offices.
“It was pretty average. She told me that I should look at maybe some vocational education,” Fajardo Orshan recalled. “She didn’t think I was going to make it to law school.”
Fortunately, Fajardo Orshan didn’t heed what turned out to be less than sage advice from her high school counselor.
Now, after nearly a year on the job, she celebrated her formal investiture Friday as head of the third largest U.S. attorney’s office in the country. The ceremony took place inside a packed Miami ceremonial courtroom before Fajardo Orshan’s family and notable VIPs from the judiciary and world of government. Her husband stood by her side as the oath of office was administered by Chief U.S. District Judge Kevin Michael Moore.
“I can’t believe this day is finally here,” she told her guests, including Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle for whom she worked at one time, Florida Supreme Court Judge Robert J. Luck, local police chiefs, a Coast Guard admiral, federal judges and several of her predecessors. “I welcome all of you to my anniversary investiture.”
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She was referring to the fact that her ceremony was initially planned for January but had to be postponed because of the government shutdown. She then considered having it in June but ran into scheduling conflicts. Finally, she settled on Friday the 13th in September and Hurricane Dorian threatened the proceeding once again.
“I said if the hurricane hits, it’s a sign we’re not going to do this,” she quipped.
Fajardo Orshan acknowledges that she must have inherited her grandfather’s determination when she set out to prove her counselor wrong at St. Brendan High School, where she went on to graduate after attending grade school at St. Blessed Trinity Catholic School.
“That’s when I really said ‘oh no, no, no, no lady. You’re wrong.’ It really was the driving force behind me accomplishing that goal,” she insisted.
Since assuming the responsibilities of her office nearly a year ago, the unassuming Fajardo Orshan has overseen a staff of about 220 assistant U.S. attorneys and an equal number of support personnel spread among Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Fort Pierce.
Shortly after taking office, she announced drug trafficking charges against three Miami police officers. One pleaded guilty and two were convicted at trial. All three were given prison sentences.
She also announced charges against 24 alleged members and associates of a drug trafficking and money laundering organization based in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami while raising awareness on the plight of women caught up in the tentacles of human trafficking.
She has pursued cases of elder fraud and targeted international and domestic fraudsters, including a woman who was recently ordered to pay $1.6 million in restitution after convincing a victim whom she met in Houston that the woman and her entire family were living under a curse.
Still another case involved a Miami man who passed himself off as a Saudi Sultan for years and lived an over-the-top lifestyle while swindling some $8 million from dozens of unsuspecting investors.
Among her top priorities are cases involving U.S. national security, violent crime and fraud. “The good thing about this office is we have all of it,” she asserted.
Her father had to reinvent himself as an air conditioning contractor and electrical contractor after working most of his life for the now-defunct National Airlines and Pan American World Airways. He passed away in December of 2017 as Fajardo Orshan was just learning of her nomination to become U.S. attorney. Her mother is a nurse.
When Fajardo Orshan’s grandfather first came to Florida with his sister, he showed the same mettle, scrubbing toilets as a janitor to make ends meet. He encouraged his grandchildren to pursue a career not in law but medicine as they climbed the socio-economic ladder in their newly adopted homeland with its boundless possibilities.
It turned out that her grandfather never enjoyed law.
“He basically told all of his grandchildren that he wanted a doctor in the family and he would pay the education for anybody that went to medical school,” recalled Fajardo Orshan. “He tried to get my cousin, my older cousin, to do it. He tried to get me to do it.”
But there were no takers.
“When I said ‘no, I want to be a lawyer,’ her grandfather persisted. “You don’t want to be a lawyer,” he told her. “You don’t want to be a lawyer.”
Oh, but she did.
Fajardo Orshan not only made it through four years of Florida International University, she graduated from Shepard Broad College of Law at NOVA Southeastern and never looked back.
She landed a job in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office as an assistant state attorney where she developed a reputation of being “really aggressive” before opening a family law practice with her husband. She went on to be appointed by then Florida Gov. Rick Scott as a family court judge in 2012.
In the latter role, she presided over divorce cases, child neglect and domestic types of issues. That was an unconventional path to her present job, which raised eyebrows among some in Florida’s legal circles.
“They were a little thrown off with the family law stuff. But I was able to explain it’s really taught me how to be a people person,” she countered.
The U.S. attorney serves as the chief prosecutor for the United States in criminal cases and represents the federal government in civil cases as well, either as a defendant or plaintiff — worlds away from decisions over child custody and marital division of assets.
“One of the things that I learned from that is it really gave me the ability to listen, not make rush decisions,” Fajardo Orshan asserted of her time on the bench. “It really taught me how to be patient and hear both sides and sleep on it and think about it.”
Part of her experience with family law involved learning to manage people’s unique personalities.
“You see really good people at their worst, and now in the criminal system I see really bad people at their best,” she explained. “You have these clients and you have to guide them. You have to get them focused on the law because I’m not a therapist. I’m a lawyer. I’ve got to get them from this place to this place without … the emotional damage.”
As U.S. attorney, she helps set the agenda for the types of prosecutions her office pursues and the legal strategy it will use in cases like that of Chinese national Yujing Zhang who was convicted on Sept. 11 of making unlawful entry into restricted buildings or grounds at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and lying to Secret Service agents.
“We will not sleep. We will not rest. We will not be quiet until justice is fully served,” she promised to those who gathered to see her sworn in.
She also took the opportunity at Friday’s ceremony to pass along a bit of advice to her teenage son: “Life is about a lot of footsteps,” she shared. “Sometimes you turn around and you see all of your footsteps.”
Despite being nominated for her job by the president of the United States, she laments that her son didn’t seem all that impressed.
“I said, ‘well do you think I’m like something important now,” she recalled asking her son, to which he replied: “No, you’re just my mom.”
She wouldn’t have it any other way.