Lawyer ‘fought for the underdog’

Nancy Bergeson, a federal public defender in Oregon who grew up in Newport Beach, was found slain Tuesday.

Bergeson, 57, died six days shy of her 58th birthday. Her body was found in her Portland home Tuesday. Authorities there concluded after an autopsy Wednesday that Bergeson did not die of natural causes. Oregon police have made no arrests.

Her mother, Marian Bergeson, 84, is a longtime Newport Beach resident. In 1978, Marian Bergeson became the first woman to be elected to the state legislature from Orange County. Her political career included terms as a trustee on the Newport-Mesa Unified School District board of education and as a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The elder Bergeson also served as California’s secretary of education.

Nancy Bergeson’s brother-in-law, Matt McCormick, said Nancy Bergeson went to Mariners Elementary, Ensign Intermediate and Newport Harbor High schools.

Bergeson was a public defender for federal criminal cases, focusing mostly on conspiracy and white-collar crimes in Portland, McCormick said. Before that, she practiced law in Salt Lake City, where she went to law school.

“She loved her job...she was not judgmental at all. She was just a very hard worker. Always fought for the underdog,” McCormick said. “She knew and very much understood and took her job very seriously, but she didn’t take herself very seriously. She had great compassion for her clients.”

But, McCormick added, she had a remarkable ability to separate her work from her personal life. If she wasn’t in the courtroom defending clients, you could find Nancy Bergeson in the Oregon mountains hiking, skiing or somewhere around the world dragon boat racing with her teammates.

Dragon boat racing is how it sounds — large row boats elaborately decorated with dragon’s faces on either end, racing on the water.

“She probably turned to it because of the camaraderie. She was such a social person. It was sort of a common theme in her life,” McCormick said. He said the family was devastated when they got the news about Nancy Bergeson.

Nancy Bergeson was going to fly to Boston to spend Thanksgiving with her daughter Jamie. The whole family was going to get together in Newport Beach for Christmas, McCormick said.

Bergeson had an annual tradition of taking one of her nieces or nephews, only one per year, to Mount Hood in Oregon with her after Christmas. It would just be Nancy Bergeson and her niece or nephew for a week in Oregon, bonding and skiing, McCormick said.

On the day of her death, McCormick said, she was doing what she loved. Just a day after completing a client’s three-week defense for tax evasion, she was working on a federal appeal for another case.

“Nancy had this unique ability to not view it as a task, but as a challenge,” McCormick said. “I think that she loved the intellectual challenge.”

Nancy Bergeson is survived by her daughter, Jamie; younger brothers, Garth and James; younger sister, Julie; and mother and father Marian and Garth Sr. Services for Bergeson will be held in Portland and in Newport Beach. No date has been set for the Newport Beach service.