News Archive

Karla Lopez-Owens, '17, talks candidly for a story in the Indianapolis Star of why and how she, her two sisters, and their mother walked 12 hours to cross into the United States from their home in Mexico.

The father left the family, and Lopez-Owens' mother couldn't earn enough money to feed the children adequately, the story relates. "I want people to understand we were driven by desperation. We were helpless. My mom was trying to provide basic necessities for us. My mom saw a moral obligation looking at us to do what she did," Lopez-Owens said in the story.

Lopez-Owens works as a law clerk for DeFur Voran in Fishers, and as a bilingual legal assistant for Kevin Muñoz, '07. While in law school at IU McKinney, Lopez-Owens received the Public Interest Advocate Scholarship Award from the Diversity Scholarship Foundation. She also received the “Si Se Puede!/Yes We Can! Award” from the IUPUI Latino Student Association in 2015 for her student leadership, and the William M. Plater Civic Engagement Medallion from IUPUI in 2014.