was able to travel to 19 different
European countries. “You controlled
your own schedule. I don’t think
there’s a more wonderful feeling than
having a backpack on your back and
just going on adventures often by
myself. When I look back, I think,
‘How in the world did I do that?’ It
was challenging because I did a lot
of that travel by myself. But I really
grew from that experience. I’d have
to figure out how to travel from
place to place. I had to live cheaply,
so I stayed in hostels sometimes
with twelve different strangers.
At the time, it was fun,” she said
with a laugh. “It was an amazing
experience.”
Rizza graduated Cum Laude from
Mercer University in 2007 with a
Bachelor of Business Administration
and a minor in Communications and
immediately started at the Walter
F. George School of Law at Mercer
University. While in law school, she
interned for the In-House Counsel
of Mercer University, the District
Attorney in Warner Robins, Georgia,
and Hunter Maclean and Savage
and Turner law firms in
Savannah. By the end
of her second year in
law school, she became
Student Bar Association
President. She was the
first Asian-American to
hold the position. In May
2010, Rizza graduated
from Mercer Law School
and received the Wall
Street Journal Award for
Academic Excellence.
“I had all these
great visions of becoming
this high powered civil attorney,”
said Rizza. She went to Atlanta and
worked in personal injury. But it
didn’t take her long to decide that the
big city wasn’t for her. “I wanted to go
back to my roots.” After she passed
the Georgia Bar, she moved back to
Savannah to work for the District
Attorney prosecuting criminal
misdemeanors in State Court.
Her first case in 2010 served as a
big learning curve in Rizza’s career. “I
was representing a former ‘American
Idol’ finalist in a bench trail for
battery. It ended up on the front page
of the Savannah Morning News.
Even though I lost, I loved what I was
doing.”
Rizza thought she wanted to
be a career Prosecutor. “But there
weren’t opportunities in Savannah
for someone so young and with such
little experience,” she said. “I figured
if I was going to get my feet wet, I
needed to move to a smaller town for
a time to gain experience and then
hopefully move back to Savannah or
Macon.”
Fortunately for us, that smaller
town was Lyons, Georgia. Rizza took
a position in the Middle Judicial
Circuit as an Assistant District
Attorney. At 26 years old, she
became one of the youngest Assistant
District Attorneys in the State of
Georgia. The very first trial in which
she took part was a murder trial. “A
woman’s boyfriend was in charge of
her baby while she was at work. He
had called 911 and said the baby was
unresponsive. The police arrived, and
the baby was pronounced dead at the
hospital. An autopsy showed blunt
force trauma to the baby’s head, and
the jury found him guilty.”
In November 2013, Rizza was
appointed a Chief Magistrate Judge
by Superior Court Judges Cathy
Palmer and Robert Reeves making
her the first Filipino-American Judge
in Georgia as well as the youngest
Asian American to serve as a Judge.
The position came with a new
challenge. “When I was a prosecutor,
the workload was intense,” said
Rizza. “I remember going through a
box load of files in the car on the way
out of town while my husband drove.
There’s still a lot of work to do, but
this work comes with a different kind
of pressure. This is a small town, and
I see how the judgments I render
will affect people’s lives. These are
people I pass in the grocery store
or see when I pick my children up
from school. Sometimes those effects
are not positive. That’s the toughest
part. You want to help people, but as
the Judge, I can’t be their advocate.
That’s the hard part. If the burden is
not met, I have to render the decision
52 Toombs County Magazine
“I had all these great visions of
becoming this high powered civil
attorney,” said Rizza.
“But I wanted to go back
to my roots.”