Doing what’s right runs in the family: Delaney Glaze ’13

Growing up, Delaney Glaze ’13 spent much of her life hearing about the crimes committed in the city of Rochester from the candid on-the-job stories her father, Mark Glaze, a retired officer at the Rochester Police Department, would tell. Influenced by her father and drawn to the gritty side of the law, after graduating from Gettysburg College with a bachelor’s degree in History, she continued her studies at the University of Akron Law School in Ohio.

I was tuned into Delaney’s work by her sister, Mackenzie Glaze Kellermeyer ’11, a local attorney who works mainly in trust and estate work. Mackenzie told me that Delaney was finishing up law school and that as a lawyer, is “completely the opposite” of her sister. Mackenzie does a lot of researching and writing, but rarely sets foot in the courtroom. She told me that Delaney comes alive in the courtroom as a member of the prosecuting attorney team and that she is, and excuse the language, “a total bad ass.”

In Delaney’s first summer internship of law school, she interned at the local Rochester District Attorney’s office. There she was part of the vehicular department dealing with DUI trials and vehicular manslaughter. After all of the crazy stories from her father, she was finally a part of the grit she’d heard so much about. She was also involved in cases that dealt with the elderly, crimes like physical abuse, assault and break-ins. She did not love this part of her work, as she has a soft spot in her heart for the elderly, especially after participating in Harley’s Hospice program. She was recognized a lot while working in the Rochester DA, as colleagues of her father would often be witnesses in court or working at the court house.

Her 2nd and 3rd years in law school she worked at the DA’s office in Canton, Ohio. By now, she had earned a certificate to get her own cases and she worked in the Juvenile Division. She started with juvenile car infractions and traffic violations (think running a stop sign, speeding). Her time was spent talking with parents (vs. a lawyer) about the crime their child committed. Often parents made excuses for the reason their child broke the law, telling elaborate stories about why it happened, and Delaney, as a lawyer, simply wanted to say, “Yes, but they broke the statute, and it doesn’t matter why.” As her time continued, her cases got a little bigger. Many of her own cases involved felony, serious misdemeanors, domestic violence, and petty theft. “You’d be surprised how many people try to steal from Walmart and Marshall’s!” She said each store has a surveillance team that sits in the back and watches the different departments of the store. Delaney says she has watched many videos and read a lot of police reports for crimes of this nature. Most often, again, she talks with parents about the crime, but if there is ever a chance of jail time, a public defender is retained, but that 90% of the time the case never goes to trial and a deal is made.

The biggest case she participated in at the Canton DA’s office was the shooting of a 14-year old by a 13-year old. The case lasted for 6 months and part of her job was to look through over 500,000 pages of Facebook posts. They brought her onto the team to decipher the “young people talk.” As an intern, she was able to go to all of the hearings (cases are usually closed to only the necessary participants in the trial) and she said it was “really intense.”

One thing she learned from many of the cases she has participated in, is that she is so fortunate to have a supportive and caring family. She has seen so many cases where parents call the police on their own children, not so much for breaking a law, but to get them out of the house because it would make the life of the parent easier. In more difficult cases, she says a lot of the crimes the children commit are learned within their home environments–physical abuse, sexual assault, vandalism, theft—it’s a vicious cycle.  Children learn a lot from observing and interacting with their parents and the same is true for Delaney and her sisters, Mackenzie, and Tessa ’17. They learned about hard work and supporting their community from both of their parents. Their mom, Tammy Allen, is owner of Penfield’s Bangz Salon and former president of Harley Parent Council. Despite owning her own business, in her off hours, she was often found organizing and promoting the Harley School store. Their dad, Mark, now a “stay at home dad” kept our local community safe with his many years of service on the police force and also volunteered at Harley.

Now Delaney has taken the bar exam (done Covid-19 style, online, with fewer essays and fewer multiple choice questions making it harder to earn points) and is back in Rochester. She is newly employed at the Law Offices of Pullano and Farrow (like her sister, Mackenzie) and working in the litigation department, focusing primarily in personal litigation such as personal injury, wrongful death, wills, trusts and estates litigation, and guardianship litigation. She has found that she is making meaningful connections with clients during what may be an extremely hard time in their lives and she is learning so much everyday by working alongside such experienced attorneys.

Delaney looks back at her time at Harley and is so thankful for the emphasis on writing, writing papers, and analyzing. She said English teacher, Pat Malone, assigned a ton of papers and she was always available to help with editing if you had any questions. This helped to elevate her as a student at Gettysburg. She also loved her history teachers, Bill Schara, Kristin Sheradin, and Sandy Foster. She chose history as her major in college because they made the subject so interesting and fun. She said two other favorite teachers are James Aldrich-Moodie (JAM) and John Dolan.

Delaney says, “You don’t really know all that you’ve learned until you’ve left Harley.” She learned how to write, to organize her thoughts, and to make a good argument, and these teachings definitely prepared her to be the bad ass lawyer that she is today!