Candis Trusty's childhood was idyllic, as if ripped out of an old black-and-white show on the TV Land channel. Her parents, grandparents (on both sides) and great-grandparents lived on the same stretch of curved road in rural Virginia, where cellphone services is intermittent even today. She met her husband at age 10. He was the neighbor boy who would eat at her house because his mom didn't cook very well. The two have been married for decades, and she's never even been on a date with anybody else.

The gravitation toward continuity persisted when the couple moved down to Miami after she graduated from law school at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she also went as an undergraduate.

In 1981 she landed an interview for an associate position with Miami attorneys Jerry Markowitz, Thomas Ringel and Joe Davis. With the exception of Davis, who went on to become a county judge in 2010, the original team is still together, and Trusty is now a name shareholder of what is now Markowitz Ringel Trusty + Hartog.

Even their firm's staff is unflinchingly loyal: Trusty's first secretary is only now retiring. The firm takes great pride in this faithfulness by engraving the names of their colleagues on plaques, each separated by length of service — five, 10 or 20 years. The firm also prides itself on its commitment to pro bono, which has has been recognized by the Florida Supreme Court.

Trusty's upbringing and lifelong sense of commitment, community and loyalty are important because these values inform her elder law practice. Elder law work — probate, trust, litigation — often puts Trusty in contact with those on the fringes of society — lonely individuals approaching the end of their lives with little social contact.

"I think because I have such a strong family, a big family, it enables me to help these people that don't have anybody," Trusty said. "It's very lonely."

Probate work is messy, as estranged family members often bicker over estates in nasty disputes that can drag on for years. Loneliness is often exacerbated by the fact that Florida is a retirement destination, she said, where older people move and leave their families behind. Fraud of all kinds is also endemic, especially in South Florida.

"The isolation from attachments, whether it be family or friends, leaves you uniquely vulnerable. Where I'm from in Virginia, my parents live in a home and can walk to my siblings' houses," Trusty said. "When I go back home, we will take our little dog for a walk and when you leave, you pick up a sibling and their dog on the way, and when you walk further down the road you pick up another sibling and another dog. By the time you get to the end of the road, there's a whole pack of dogs and people."

Her practice evolved out of pro bono work she did in the probate court. And in the past 25 or so years, Trusty has helped piece back together the lives of the elderly who, for one reason or another, became victims of fraud.

Trusty remembers an older woman who was defrauded by an in-home aide recommended to her by a taxi driver. Anytime the aide would take the woman to buy glasses, she would buy glasses for her own family. If the elderly woman would go buy clothes, the aide would also buy clothes for her family. And to make matters worse, when her client's son found out that the aide was defrauding his mother, he got rid of the aide and cleared her account.

But in her retelling of the story, the facts of the legal case were secondary. The first thing she recalled about her client were the once-a-month lunch outings, how Trusty would have to take her convertible top off to fit her client's walker in the car, how she loved listening to her stories. At one point, her client asked if they could go to celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse's restaurant in Miami Beach. So, as Trusty had done many times before, she showed up to her house, packed her walker in the car, and the pair drove off together.

"I said OK, we can do that!" Trusty said. "You are fulfilling somebody's bucket list. There are tons of people who have the means but don't have anybody who wants to spend time with people like that. I love it."

Similarly, when asked what she would change about her elder law practice, Trusty didn't cite a specific statute or funding item. She instead lamented on the loneliness that is so prevalent in Miami, a trend that she finds odd given the size of the city. In many ways, Trusty has dedicated her career to fighting loneliness.

"People have just got to care. Being a lawyer, you can do a lot of good, " Trusty said. " And as my father would always say: If you don't like it, you can fix the law.

Candis Trusty

Born: 1954

Spouse: Guy Trusty

Education: Marshall-Wythe School of Law, J.D., 1981; College of William & Mary, B.S., 1976

Experience: Shareholder, Markowitz Ringel Trusty + Hartog, 1981–present