Paragraph: (Society_Law_and_Justice/oanc-A_helping_hand-4.txt)
Sent 1: And William Martinez, 28, who cut his medical school studies short because he couldn't afford the $39,000 in loans after two years of graduate school and four years of college.
Sent 2: Martinez works two jobs as a physician's assistant and supports his elderly parents and 8-year-old son.
Sent 3: Uncommon Good has a 22-member board of doctors, lawyers and representatives of Christian groups and is recruiting mentors.
Sent 4: One goal is to get the state Legislature to pass a law to provide loan forgiveness to medical professionals and lawyers who work with the poor.
Sent 5: Mintie said she hopes her organization can be a national model for other professions.
Sent 6: She is trying to bring legal aid services to the Inland Valley -- the closest legal aid office is in El Monte and represents 700,000 poor people throughout the San Fernando, San Gabriel and Inland valleys.
Sent 7: "Unless the legal aid is in the community, you can't say you are serving the poor," Mintie said.
Sent 8: Neal Dudovitz is the executive director of Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, the legal aid office in El Monte.
Sent 9: He sees attorneys new to poverty law leave all the time because they can't afford the salary with their law school debt.
Sent 10: "She's really opened a lot of eyes in terms of having people understand how the educational debt is limiting and reducing the services that are available to low-income communities," Dudovitz said.
Sent 11: "Nancy is light years ahead of the curve on this stuff.
Sent 12: Very little is being done practically to solve it."
Sent 13: Mintie, her colleagues say, could have made a lot of money in private practice.
Sent 14: "She's very kind and pleasant," said Julius Thompson, 45, an attorney at Inner City Law Center and an Uncommon Good recipient.
Sent 15: "But she's also a woman on a mission.
Sent 16: When she sets her sights on something, she's a formidable force."