UKIAH -  The Mendocino County Sheriff's Department has lowered their flags to half-mast at their main building to honor former Madera attorney and Mendocino County Chief Public Defender Linda A. Thompson who passed away later last week after a year-long battle with cancer. Linda was born on September 14, 1959, and passed away on June 13, 2019.

She was born and raised in La Crescenta, in between Burbank and Pasadena, until such time she graduated high school in 1977 and went off to college at Arizona State University. She graduated ASU in 1981 and went to Law School at the University of San Francisco in 1981. In July of 1985, she started in criminal public defense in Madera, California, eventually becoming one of their contract defenders for six years and contracting out in Fresno, Madera, Merced, and Stanislaus Counties.

In July of 1998 when she started at a twenty-year career with the Mendocino County Public Defenders office. She started as extra help eventually becoming the Chief in 2009. She retired with the County almost one year ago in July of 2018.

She is survived by her loving, strong, kind wife, Patricia Guntly, her parents Richard and Janet Thompson, her brother Rick Thompson and sister-in-law Irma, their two kids Richard and Laura, and by a whole slew of family on the Guntly side of things whom she considers blood including her siblings, nieces and nephews, and their kids and greats. We have been blessed.

Love who you love while you can, and live every day with that feeling in your hearts.

Memorial Service shall be at Eversole Mortuary on June 29, 2019, at 10 am to be followed by a celebration of life in Ukiah. More info will be announced at the funeral.