When Melissa C. Meirink was young and had something to complain about, her grandmother replied, “While you’re crying out of one eye, there are people crying out of two.”

“She put things in perspective for me in a way that made me really think about others. My abuelita and my mom really instilled a service-oriented approach in me at a very young age,” said Meirink last month. “And they both love to remind me, ‘Melissa, you were put on this earth to serve and not to be served.'”

Meirink’s remarks came during her ceremonial swearing-in on Feb. 27 as the newest judge on Colorado’s 22-member Court of Appeals. She was born in Mexico and has Yaqui tribal ancestry, and is one of few American Indian judges to sit on Colorado’s bench.

The addition of Meirink to the state’s second-highest court in January meant that its membership is balanced evenly between men and women for the first time.

“There’s something about this moment — this moment in our history where we look to the courts with increasing emphasis on protecting the rule of law, on upholding our systems of checks and balances,” said Kara Veitch, chief legal counsel for Gov. Jared Polis. “People describe (Meirink) as wickedly smart, empathetic, an effective leader, an incredibly gifted legal writer on research and so very helpful.”

Meirink came to the Court of Appeals with an unusual background. For 10 years, she was a staff attorney for the state Supreme Court. In that role, her largest responsibility was screening petitions filed with the state’s highest court for review of Court of Appeals decisions. Meirink made an initial determination about whether the justices should take a closer look at a case, put the appeal on pause while the Supreme Court decided a related case, or return the case to the Court of Appeals because a recent decision may affect the outcome.

She would also recommend to the justice on duty what to do with certain motions.

“In both instances, she would present her recommendations so deferentially,” said Justice Melissa Hart, speaking at Meirink’s investiture ceremony. “And yet — and I think my colleagues would agree about this — she was pretty much always correct. She just has such great instincts for legal analysis and is so good at thinking through these things.”

In her application for the Court of Appeals vacancy, Meirink listed multiple high-profile cases in which she provided behind-the-scenes support. Those included the appeals of Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray, two of the men on Colorado’s death row at the time the legislature abolished capital punishment in 2020 and whose sentences Polis commuted.

Meirink wrote it was unclear, at that point, if the process for direct Supreme Court review of death penalty cases still applied, and she advised the court on how to proceed.

Her work as a staff attorney was “similar to the role of a Court of Appeals judge,” Meirink wrote. “I review all the issues raised on appeal, read the appellate record and the briefs, and determine whether the lower court erred.”

Among her other duties, Meirink selected cases the Supreme Court hears for its long-running “Courts in the Community” program, and helped prepare teachers and students for the events. She also helped to draft appellate rules and authored opinions about unanswered judicial ethics questions — for instance, whether state judges may have a LinkedIn profile and connect with lawyers on the platform.

Chief Judge Gilbert M. Román said he realized that when Meirink arrived at his court, she already knew all of her colleagues from reviewing their opinions for the Supreme Court.

“You may even know us better than we know ourselves,” he quipped.

Prior to her work as a staff attorney, Meirink was in private practice for the major law firms of Greenberg Traurig and Holland & Hart. Among other things, she helped clients in the energy industry comply with regulations protecting historical and cultural resources on tribal lands.

Meirink was “always even-keeled and -tempered with opposition counsel and co-counsel on some very difficult, sensitive and emotional topics,” recalled Jennifer Weddle, who recruited Meirink to her firm. “Equally wonderful to tribal leaders, federal representatives, state agencies and other stakeholders. She just has a wonderful temperament and is always respectful of everyone even if their positions diverge from hers.”

Other speakers mentioned Meirink’s work to establish a group of bilingual volunteers to help Spanish-speaking tenants facing eviction in Arapahoe County and her time working with the Courts Committee of the Colorado Access to Justice Commission.

Meirink said she would continue to work with the commission and participate in other court outreach programs. She also indicated she was committed to making the appellate courts more accessible to non-lawyers by helping draft rules in plain English.

“For many parties, an appeal is just an extension of something poignant or maybe something terrible that happened in their lives,” she said. “Being removed from the trial process can make it easy to see parties as just names on a page. I promise I won’t do that.”