The Missing Variable
When Enrique Fuller-Avalos (’26 J.D.) was in middle school in Portland, Oregon, his family fell on hard times and ended up homeless. As one of eight siblings, Fuller-Avalos was separated from his family. During this traumatic time, he was constantly calculating, trying to prepare for an uncertain future. He’d often wonder, “When should I eat? What happens if I sleep through my bus stop? How am I going to prepare for school?” He didn’t know it then, but he was developing the mind of a lawyer.
His mother, a resourceful go-getter, enrolled him in Friends of the Children, a nonprofit that matches at-risk youth with a dedicated, long-term mentor. His first mentor’s father was on the Oregon Supreme Court.
“I didn’t know any attorneys,” Fuller-Avalos says. “You see them on TV and they’re always the villain.”
During one tough stretch, when Fuller-Avalos’ mounting absences resulted in him being kicked out of high school, his mother opened up and told the school what they were going through. Things began to shift. More help started to arrive. Fuller-Avalos took summer school to make up credits and won the UNCF Jordan Wings Scholarship, a full ride to any university. He enrolled at Western Oregon University.
Stability, it turned out, was the missing variable all along.
“School had never been hard because the material was hard,” he says. “It was hard because of my circumstances.”
Fuller-Avalos was the first in his family to graduate and earn a degree, and in those first few semesters he had to shake a case of imposter syndrome.
It wasn’t long before he found a supportive network of counselors, professors, and advisors, and his future started to sharpen into view. Thinking he’d want to be a police officer, he got an internship with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. But after a ride-along where he watched an officer talk a man off a cliff, he started to doubt the job was for him.
“I still wanted that community connection, though,” he says. “So, I started looking at law more seriously.”
At Gonzaga on a Carl Maxey Scholarship, he used the same approach that had always worked.
“People have the capacity to help,” he says. “But you have to give them the opening.”
Professor Jason Gillmer nominated him to the Minority and Justice Commission on the Washington Supreme Court when he was a 1L, and he’s been clerking at the U.S. Attorney’s Office since then. After graduation, he’ll clerk for Chief Justice Debra Stephens (’87, ’93 J.D.).
What draws him to appellate work is its reach, the idea that he can help shape the law. And his mind is built for it.
“It just feels normal to hold a lot of complexity in my head at once,” he says.
Fuller-Avalos knows he wouldn’t be here without everyone who has helped him along the way. He’s already presented at Friends of the Children, where he sat across from young people.
“When they see someone who comes from a background like theirs, who’s living proof that it’s possible, that’s the whole thing,” he says. “That’s why I’m doing this.”