Michael & Susan Charlson

 Michael Charlson & Susan Austin

Susan Austin and Michael Charlson – pictured here engaged in two favorite activities, drinking and eating – are lawyers living in Oakland, California, with their sons Sam (7) and Ben (4).  Both Susan and Michael are charged with difficult – nay, near-impossible – professional tasks.  Susan is a deputy attorney general with the California Attorney General’s office, and her job is to protect the environment in this new age of “if we just deny humans have an environmental impact, any problems will go away.”  (Of course they will go away, but not quite in the manner those in denial have in mind.)   Michael, who’s been a Kalkhovia hanger-on since 1999, has an arguably even more difficult task – that of getting Kevin out of trouble.  While some opt for the proactive “let’s consult a lawyer before we’re screwed” approach, Kevin calls only after the authorities call him.  This helps explain why Kevin often introduces himself as “Michael’s retirement plan.”  Michael rejoices in and depends on this, and urges Kevin to do more deals – hopefully with well-insured, publicly-traded companies. 

Susan’s and Kevin’s paths may have first crossed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Susan spent her first year of preschool.  Her family then moved to Diamond Bar, California, on the outer edge of Los Angeles County; cattle and coyotes roamed the golden hills.  Happily, the strip malls caught up with the Austins, so that to Michael, Diamond Bar is just another cheesy LA suburb.  After graduating from Stanford in Human Biology, Susan moved to Harvard Law School, where she researched the use of economics to solve environmental problems.  She has used that work to good ends, designing a cap-and-trade system to reduce selenium run-off from farms in the Central Valley – a system she designed long before cap-and-trade was a more household concept.  She has traveled the globe and is a far more cosmopolitan and interesting woman than Michael will ever be – in no small part because Michael has no intention of becoming a woman. 

Michael was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  His father designed nuclear propulsion systems for the Navy, and moved the family after each ship was commissioned – nine times, all over the country before Michael landed in Pocatello, Idaho, for high school.  Somehow, he made his way to Stanford and studied biology, with a plan for graduate work in neurobiology.  An unsteady hand landed him out of school without the Ph.D., however, leaving him no choice but to enter Boalt Hall at Berkeley, to study law.  Susan and Michael both served as law clerks to Judge William Canby of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit – she in 1995; he in 1985.  They met in 2005 at a clerk’s reunion honoring the 25^th anniversary of the judge’s appointment to the bench; and he married them in 2009.  In addition to Sam and Ben, Michael has two daughters, Doria (25) and Meredith (22), from a prior marriage.