Merced College alumna Nicole Silveira feels at her best inside a courtroom.
The current Supervising Deputy District Attorney of Merced County appreciates the challenges — the professional one that sizes up her prosecutorial skill, and the personal one that sizes up her fight.
Silveira likens the process of trying cases to studying for and then taking the biggest test, but one with real people and real stakes.
“I tell jurors, ‘Do you understand this isn’t like it is on TV? This isn’t Criminal Minds or Law & Order,’” Silveira said. “But it is a sort of rush. You prepare for everything you can and see what happens.”
Silveira, 40, has spent nearly all of her 13-plus years in law with the Merced County DA’s office. She is in her 12th year in Merced and her sixth as Supervising Deputy District Attorney.
Silveira, the first female attorney to be promoted to a supervisor position at the DA’s office, is now preparing to run for District Attorney in the June 7 election.
“DAs have a great opportunity to effect change,” she said. “We are the ones who decide what people are charged with. Of course judges have a lot of power, but it’s really our responsibility as district attorneys to decide who should be charged, who should be held accountable. … It’s a great responsibility.”
Silveira envisioned a life in law as a 10-year-old girl. For a 4-H project, she mapped out her future on poster board — four years of college, three years of law school, 10 as a lawyer, another 10 as a judge.
“I was always amazed by people who chose to dedicate their lives to service,” she said. “I always wanted to do the same.”
She started at Atwater High and Merced College.
“I was never the smartest person in the room, but I would work the hardest,” Silveira said. “At Merced College, there were so many resources to help me do that. … It’s a small community where everyone wants to see you do well.”
Silveira earned a B.A. from San Diego State and her juris doctorate at California Western School of Law. She could have done anything in law after passing the California Bar in 2008. She’d already worked to have options.
Between her final year at SDSU and her first year of law school, Silveira became a field representative for then-state senator and former Congressman Jeff Denham.
During law school, Silveira interned with the public defender’s office in Merced and the DA’s office in San Francisco. After law school, she did criminal defense work and civil litigation.
By early 2010, Silveira wanted back into the courtroom and applied for assistant DA jobs throughout California. Her brother and his wife were about to have a baby when she returned home to accept a position in Merced.
Now Silveira is ready for more. She is running for Merced County District Attorney against incumbent Kimberly Lewis. Her campaign will kick off at Corbin Cash Distillery in Atwater on March 10.
“I think the criminal justice system and Merced are at a crossroads,” Silveira said. “Homicides have tripled here in the past three years. I feel that, in this day and age, it’s not enough for prosecutors to respond to crime. … I believe a DA should take a proactive role in the community.”
Silveira will push for more use of data and technology to reveal trends that help prevent crime and also help investigators and prosecutors do their work.
She also wants to expand her work with the School Attendance Review Board (SARB), tasked with increasing school attendance and graduation rates, which are proven to reduce crime. She developed a parenting class for SARB to help parents intervene with their children who are at-risk of not graduating after missing too many school days.
Silveira has precious little downtime right now. But she is an active member of the Kiwanis Club and Elks Lodge 1240, and volunteers with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She winds down while walking her goldendoodle Sunny through downtown Merced, enjoying its current renaissance.
She sees bigger things on the horizon for Merced County, and wants to continue to support that growth from inside the courtroom.
“I will never let anyone outwork me,” Silveira said. “If the jury says a defendant is not guilty, it will never be because I failed to do everything I could to put the best case forward.”