Always physically active, Skordas was a player/coach for various softball teams of lawyers. He asked Miller, whom he knew casually while at the U. law school and had seen playing for another lawyers' team, to play second base for his team.

Now they have two teenage daughters.

In 1994, Skordas says he "had my dream job" — chief deputy for Yocom, running a large prosector's office, involved in the top cases.

"I started the first gang unit. We reformed the arson task force. It was all good stuff, and we had plans for major changes (in countywide prosecutions and victims rights) for the next four years."

Then Yocom lost his re-election.

"And suddenly," Skordas recalls, "I was out of a job."

Skordas went "cold turkey" into private defense work, he says. He struggled for about a year, but now he turns down dozens of cases each month because he can't handle all of the requests for work, he says.

"Dave asked me to come back" when Yocom won re-election to his old job in 1998. "But I was established. I've made a lot of money at this" private defense work. And collected some strange payments.

At one time he had four or five partly running motorcycles in his garage, fee payments from road-hardened defendants. "I made him a deal," says wife Charlotte: "Sell them for what he could and then buy a new Harley. He did."

He's been involved recently in a number of high-profile cases as well as quietly representing the less famous — like victims seeking help from the Rape Crisis Center.

And he's representing Elizabeth Smart as a "guardian ad litem" attorney after her highly publicized recovery from a months-long kidnapping.

But now, says Skordas, it's time for public work again.

It's prosecuting, civil and appellate work he wants, not black robes.

Should he lose to Shurtleff, he won't apply to be a judge.

"I've never wanted to be a judge, although I respect them and consider a number friends. You can't believe the kick you can get out of being before a jury, cross-examining, trying a case. Judges don't get that."

Skordas admits some of his supporters "were upset" that he took on the Workman defense just as his AG's race took off.

"Politically, it may not have been a smart move because of the time involved. But win or lose (his AG's race), it will be a fun case to try."

And Skordas likes a challenge — as long as it comes with some balance, too.

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com