Ranee Gonsalez: Serving the Fifth Judicial District for 25-plus years

WORLAND – It has been 25 years since Ranee Gonsalez first started working as a stenographer for the District Court, Fifth Judicial District.

Since then, she has travelled the many miles between Washakie, Hot Springs, Big Horn and Park counties, hearing a myriad of court cases and transcribing them for the record. She has worked with three different judges, Gary Hartman, Robert Skar, and Bobbi Overfield.

When asked how she got her start in court reporting, Gonsalez said, "My mother said, 'This would be a very good job for you,' and she took me to Denver to join the Denver Academy of Court Reporting and dropped me off." Gonsalez joined the class of 1987 and after her graduation, worked as a freelance stenographer for nearly 10 years.

It was not until her husband began working for Marathon Pipeline in Worland that Gonsalez began work as the District Court reporter in Worland, starting in 1996.

"I'm the first female in the District as a court reporter. My job is to capture the spoken word in juvenile hearings, civil matters and criminal matters. As I write on my stenomachine in shorthand, I build my own dictionary that translates it to my computer. When we're in court, it feeds to my judge's computer as well so she can read what is being said," she explained.

Travelling is a large part of Gonsalez's work, and she enjoys being able to hit the road and see all of Wyoming's landscapes. She has family in Cody, as well as friends in Basin, Thermopolis and Worland that she is able to visit on her excursions. She added, "I like the technical side of things and I enjoy the people I work with."

Gonsalez has seen technology improve over the years. "When I first got out of college and started freelancing, I would substitute in for the court reporter. Real time sort of came after I started. It was there, people were utilizing it in the larger cities, but I know when I did my internship the court reporter had just gotten a brand new typewriter and was so excited about that.

"I started out with a candy computer, so I could make corrections on the computer at least. It's interesting to think about it, the court reporter whose job I took had been there for 40 years, and the reporter before him was a pen writer. That's how it has evolved, with a pen writer, then the next reporter used typewriters and eventually at the very end a computer that made life easier," Gonsalez said.

Technology allowed Gonsalez and the courts to continue working during the COVID-19 pandemic. "I can tell you also that things have changed with COVID," she said. "We went virtual instead of travelling to each one of our courts, so I have worked from my home for the most part since March 2020. Just now we have done two jury trials and a couple days of in-person hearings and one civil trial that we did in person. It has been really nice not having to travel, and we have been able to cover a lot of hearings from different counties without having to wonder if we can get there in a day or not."

On the other hand, Gonsalez and other stenographers across the country have fought technology as digital recordings become an option to record court hearings, proving their continued importance to the courts. "There is new technology out there with the audio sync and real-time, there's always worry out there about digital recording. We fight that battle. Over the years we've had to fight it as an association just to let it be known that real-time reporting is so much more accurate than digital recording in the fact that, if I don't hear it, neither will a tape recorder.

"There are many benefits to having an actual court reporter. I can stop them and say, 'Oh, I didn't get that.' People talk on top of each other, sometimes they create words that aren't really words... one judge used to always call marijuana wacky tobaccy. But anyways, we have the ability to stop people and ask them to repeat, where a digital recording does not have that capability.

"Also, my judge will say, 'Oh can you pull up that hearing from six months ago and find out what I ordered from that?' Well, I can have that answer for her in about five minutes where with a digital recording; you could not do that quickly," she said.

Gonsalez has enjoyed being able to see court cases come and go. "It's not something that you go into thinking that you are just going to hear a lot of positive, happy things, but it is rewarding to see when people can get their tire out of the ditch and back on the roadway, get their lives put back together.

"From the time it gets to District Court, we will do an arraignment, then a change of plea or a jury trial, then a sentencing, then a lot of times that's it unless they come back through on probation litigation or something, but you will hear about people down the road and know that they have succeeded. Or we just don't see them again; we know that they've gotten their lives back on the straight and narrow," Gonsalez said.

"I have been very blessed to work with three wonderful judges over the years, Judge Hartman, then Skar, then Overfield. I have been fortunate in that respect. The travel, although we burn up a lot of road time during the day when we could be handling hearings, the beauty of Wyoming is wonderful to see. It has been amazing," Gonsalez said of her work, 25 years in the making.