Meet: Court Clerk Isabel Klein

Isabel M. Klein will officially start work as the new town court clerk on August 2, appointed at an annual salary of $75,000.

"She is a very good find for our court with vast experience in that important job," Judge Salvatore Lagonia said.

Prior to becoming a Yorktown town employee, Klein was the chief clerk of the Goshen Court in Orange County. Before that she worked at the Newburgh town court where she was interviewed and hired by Judge Richard Clarino in August 2004 despite having no background in law.

She got the job because of her previous supervisory background and steady employment, she said. That background includes employment at the Newburgh YMCA, where she worked in a high-school drop-out prevention program. She also worked in the late 1990s as the summer camp and after-school program at YMCA. Plus, she held a supervising position for YMCA homemaker services, where she prepared parents for their children to be either removed from the home or brought back. That's in addition to private-sector employment.

Her resume has prepared her to come to Yorktown, she said.

As a chief clerk at Goshen, her responsibilities included running the office and sitting in with the judges in court, as well as liaison with agencies that did business with the court, provide staff support, and other responsibilities involved all aspects of the court office.

"What's memorable is the judges' compassion," she said. "It's their job because their humanity is involved in the case."

Klein received her high school education from Washington Irvington High School in Manhattan, which at the time was an all-girls school. She attended the Manhattan Community College where she received credits to move to a preliminary college, she said. She also attended Lehman College and is currently working on receiving her Bachelor's of Science in organizational management from Nyack College.

She started taking night courses because she realized that an Associate Degree was no longer enough to get a job. While attending classes, working full time, she also took care of her two daughters, Elyssa and Jenna, who were 8 and 5 years old.

Her older daughter Elyssa is now 27, and works as a horseback-riding instructor in Orange County. Her younger daughter Jenna, died in 2001 at the age of 16. 

She could not provide any photographs because most of them were destroyed in a 2005 fire. Her town house, the same one she lives in town after renovations, was attached to another house where kids were playing with matches, which caused the blaze. Half of her house was damaged and she was forced to live in a hotel for 11 months until she was able to return, she said.

Some of Klein's hobbies include scuba diving, baking and cooking, especially Indian, Asian, Hispanic cuisines and soups. 

Klein lives in Middletown, NY, and she will commute to work.