Editor’s Note: Four 22nd Judicial District Court judges are retiring. We sat down with three of them recently to talk about their experiences and their plans. A fourth, Judge Larry Green, did not want to be interviewed.

(Last in a series)

Elaine DiMiceli can picture it now: the cool, clean, white sand beaches of Fiji, the rolling outback of Australia and the crystal blue water of New Zealand.

Judge Elaine DiMiceli

For once in 12 years as a 22nd Judicial District Court judge, DiMiceli will trade in her robe for a suitcase and sombrero as she splurges for a much coveted vacation three weeks abroad.

DiMiceli, who has earned a reputation as a stern but fair judge, is retiring from her post — one of four judges retiring this year — to seek rest and relaxation while fishing for red snapper, traveling to exotic lands and finally unpacking boxes of personal belongings still stuffed in her Slidell home’s cabinets left over from Hurricane Katrina restoration.

With a mixture of sadness and optimism, DiMiceli is ready to put the gruesome murders, rapes and other crimes that consume her day behind her. But she’s sad to leave the courtroom that’s given her identity and purpose in life.

“I’m at the point where I’m ready to get some free time,” she said. “I’ve been working since high school. I’m ready to hang it up. But I’m going to miss it. It’s an extremely interesting position. Every day is different.”

Her job seemed destined to be different from the start.

Twelve years ago, then judicial candidate DiMiceli and her husband huddled together, fingers crossed, watching the nightly news in the bedroom of their Lakeshore Estates home in Slidell. The anchor rattled off results of a hotly contested judgeship race for the 22nd Judicial District Court in Covington and DiMiceli, it seemed, was the frontrunner with just a few more precincts to count.

But unbeknownst to her, a group of loyal followers, hoping to celebrate a victory party, watched a separate news broadcast in her den. That prognosis was grim — the broadcast indicated she was a surefire loss.

Emerging from the bedroom with a smile and air of victory, DiMiceli found the den was vacant. Her loyal followers, expecting the loss, had left. Her spirit was zapped.

“It was something else,” she said, 12 years later. “I went to bed thinking I lost, and it wasn’t until I woke up and read the newspapers that I found the results.”

DiMiceli, now 65, had won, but also walked away with a lesson that’s helped her well on her 12 years on the bench and one she hopes to pass to her successor.

“Don’t dwell on what happened in the past,” she said. “It will drive you crazy. Leave everything at the office. The home is where you unwind.”

She said this with an air of authority, having seen from the bench first hand the atrocities of human nature.

In 2001-2002, she presided over the trial of Ralph Stogner, convicted of raping and killing an 11-year-old girl in 1998. And just last month, she presided over Dominic Robinson’s first-degree murder trial. Robinson was accused of murdering Mandeville mother Samantha Jaume, 25, when he followed her home from Wal-Mart in Covington on July 4, 2001, to carjack her Ford Expedition. Her four small children were inside the home when she was shot to death.

The murder stunned the Northshore, and Robinson was convicted of the charge. But it wasn’t over. Robinson life still had to be debated by a jury. Prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.

As an Eden Isles resident, DiMiceli frantically packed boxes of items from her office while jurors deliberated and Hurricane Gustav approached. During Katrina, her home flooded with a few feet of water. She hoped there wasn’t a repeat. Most jurors, she said, also lived in mandatory evacuation areas. They, like her, had to leave. She declared the sentencing phase a mistrial.

It’s still unclear when it will be rescheduled, DiMiceli said, but opponents argued the move will cost taxpayers thousands to reseat the jury.

But for DiMiceli, a mistrial was the only choice.

Three years after Hurricane Katrina, she still has unpacked boxes from the flood in cabinets after being forced to rent a house for seven months while her home was repaired. She didn’t want jurors to see the same fate.

But now, with retirement months away, she already envisioned what she will do with those boxes and the ones she will pack from her office, 12 years worth of files and knickknacks.

She plans to fill her days with an ad hoc judgeship or possibly mediation work, she said. And maybe she’ll revisit her work with the court’s drug court, which she, alongside Judge Peter Garcia, helped implement.

After more than a decade on the bench, and several years as Slidell’s city attorney and an assistant prosecutor, it’s the one program she’s most proud of.

After seeing the same people — 70 percent — routinely back in court for drug or other offenses to feed their drug habit, DiMiceli started the court to offer drug counseling and rehabilitation to root out the problem, she said.

Now only 30 percent are repeat offenders, she said.