With a combined total of over eighty years of legal service, our professional support staff work with our team of lawyers through every aspect of the case. Our staff can boast decades of courtroom experience as well as clinical nursing experience. One is a registered nurse and three are fluent Spanish speakers. All are consummate professionals dedicated to providing unparalleled service to our clients.
Thelma Alvarado-Garza, Paralegal
Thelma Alvarado-Garza joined the firm in August 1992. She serves as a litigation paralegal and case docket manager with extensive experience in products liability cases, personal injury cases such as aviation accidents, wrongful death and propane/natural gas explosions and FTCA cases. Thelma has assisted our attorneys in all aspects of civil litigation, from initial intake through jury verdict. She is also a fluent Spanish speaker.
Thelma obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas A&M University in 1988. She has been President of the Capital Area Paralegal Association and a member of National Association of Legal Assistants.
Rosa Delgado, Paralegal
Prior to moving to Austin fourteen years ago, Rosa was a hair dresser in a small east Texas town. When she came to Austin in 2001, Rosa changed her career path and started working in the field of law. She joined our firm in 2003. Rosa provides support to the attorneys in all aspects of litigation. She has an Associate’s Degree in Criminal Justice and previously served as a volunteer for the Austin Police Department and attended APD’s Citizens Police Academy. Rosa enjoys spending her spare time with her baby girl, husband and four-legged furry child. She is also a fluent Spanish speaker.
Aline Jordan, Nurse Paralegal
Aline Jordan received her nursing degree from the University of Texas in 1979. She then began working in Labor and Delivery at Brackenridge, a Level 3 teaching facility in Austin. Over the ensuing 7 years, she became charge nurse on the night shift as well as participated in the creation of policies and procedures and in-house services. Her next move was to the Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Seton Hospital where she learned how to deliver care to the sickest of newborns. She followed two of her primary care babies home over the next few years, providing them with in home pediatric care.
Not interested in returning to hospital nursing, she began looking around for something that would offer intellectual challenges as well as build on her experiences. The advertisement for a law firm needing the services of an obstetrical nurse was too strange to pass up. She has 25 years’ experience as a medical nurse legal consultant and patient advocate.
Although birth related injuries are a special focus for Aline, she has also participated in claims involving adult injuries, environmental toxic torts, pharmaceutical cases and even a few criminal forensic cases. Her time in the office is spent on medical research, collaboration with medical experts and attorneys, teaching attorneys when necessary, investigation of defense experts as to their credibility and preparation of exhibits and strategies for trial. She has assisted attorneys in responding successfully to Daubert challenges and has been instrumental in helping attorneys eliminate certain defense experts by having them stricken by the court or withdrawn by the defense.
To Aline, this work represents the ultimate in patient advocacy, every nurses’ primary responsibility. She has assisted law firms who represent babies and their families to present information to the FDA on vacuum extractors, which led to the issuance of the FDA alert to health care providers and finally to the obstetrical community to recognizing the dangers associated with their use and changing practice.
Sandra L. Gable, Administrator
Sandy graduated from Empire State College with a BS in Accounting. She worked with a law firm in Syracuse, NY for eighteen years before moving to Austin, Texas and joining our firm in 2000. She is a member of the Association of Legal Administrators, is active in her church and enjoys spending time with her two children and three grandchildren.
Pamela Potthoff, Paralegal
Pamela Potthoff joined Whitehurst, Harkness, Brees, Cheng, Alsaffar, Higginbotham, & Jacob, PLLC, in September 2017. She provides administrative support to the attorneys and clients for all Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) cases.
Pamela has more than 10 years of experience in healthcare, specifically in the acute care hospital setting. She has experience in Health Information Management as a medical coder and with abstracting and trending neurosurgical data for the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP). Pamela also has experience with Quality Improvement Initiatives to improve patient safety.
Pamela earned her Bachelor of Science Degree in Health Information Management from Texas State University in 2008. She is a native Austinite who loves everything the city has to offer. She enjoys the outdoors, jogging at the hike and bike trail, traveling, and spending time with friends and family.
Karin Brauner, Intake Specialist
Karin Brauner is the Intake Specialist at Whitehurst, Harkness, Brees, Cheng, Alsaffar, Higginbotham & Jacob, PLLC. She grew up moving quite frequently, both in the United States and overseas, as her father was in the military. She has strong ties to the military community and is very proud of her veteran father. After attending The University of Texas at El Paso, she moved with her family to Austin. She has two grown sons and enjoys all things outdoors.
Prior to joining the firm, Karin was the property manager for a multi-million dollar portfolio. We are so glad that she chose to bring her multitasking, organizational, and interpersonal skills to the legal field to assist the firm with case management.