Lawyers can alter someone’s finances, freedoms and rights, but only a few actually save lives at the office. AZA associate Karina Sanchez-Peralta is an exception. 

In the spring of 2024, Angie Townsend, an executive secretary who served as a backbone of AZA for 27 years, collapsed in the office and went into cardiac arrest. Karina, an emergency room nurse before she attended law school, came to her aid, calmly talked to her and performed CPR for about 15 minutes before EMTs arrived and shocked Angie’s heart four times to bring her back to life. The EMTs said Angie would have died without Karina’s help. 

Monica Uddin, who was with Angie when she collapsed, said Karina’s calm, controlled demeanor in a life-threatening emergency situation was amazing to watch. It is the way Karina is in court, too, Monica said. 

Angie says she still feels like a snow globe that is being shaken, but she knows she had only about an 8% chance of survival without Karina. “She’s my angel. She deserves everything good in this world,” Angie said.  

Everyone at AZA now gets CPR training, and the the firm bought a defibrillator. They also, of course, have Karina Sanchez-Peralta. 

“Saving Angie’s life was instinctive, a superhero-like response.” said managing partner John Zavitsanos. “On the surface there is this disarming, nurturing person. Under the surface is an assassin. She has a ferocious motor.”  

Karina went to trial three times in her first year, a lot even for an AZA associate. Jurors in one case  said she was their favorite lawyer. Another time, she crossed the defendant effectively with only 36 hours’ notice. She also brought in a pro bono case for a nurse she knew and won an MSJ on her own to keep a hospital from making nurses pay for training the hospital required. 

“She is really unstoppable. She’s supernaturally good at questioning a witness,” said partner Monica, who suspects Karina’s mock trial experience in law school contributed to this talent. 

Her colleagues praise her poise, energy and enthusiasm. Joe Ahmad, one of the co-founders of AZA, worked with Karina on a case in which AZA won a $25.6 million breach of contract jury verdict in a case pitting AZA client doctors group Fondren Orthopedic Ltd. against healthcare giant HCA Healthcare. 

“She was the jury’s favorite. I tried not to take too much offense to that,” Joe said. He said jurors found her to be clear and understandable. He said she spoke with positivity and optimism.  

“She made our team better, not just because she knew things about hospital work that we didn’t but also because of her energy,” he said. 

Karina is a graduate of Katy ‘s Taylor High School, where she learned to love soccer, which came in handy when she married a sports agent. She went to the University of Houston and planned  to study biology. But she worked a summer job at a doctor’s office, decided she wanted to be hands-on helping people and moved to Texas Woman’s University in the Texas Medical Center to become a nurse.  

“I was too chicken to go to law school then. My mother was a housekeeper to a family headed by a lawyer, and I always felt very brown around them. I internalized that I wasn’t good enough,” Karina said.  

She got over that after years in the children’s burn unit and the Memorial Hermann emergency room, where she was a charge nurse and had up to 19 patients at a time. She would come home exhausted, her body hurt, and she lost sleep over what she saw. She also felt disrespected by administrators and by patients and family members who were having the worst day of their lives and took it out on staff. So, she tried the law. 

She aced law school at University of Houston, obtaining Order of the Coif, Order of the Barristers, Houston Law Review and graduating magna cum laude  She had job offers after summer clerking at some top Houston law firms. But she saw folks at AZA she could relate to doing the kind of hands-on work she wanted. As she put it, she stalked AZA, and a pair of judges she knew helped her get the interview that got her the job. 

She chose well. When a former firm attacked her work for them in what AZA lawyers believed was a haphazard series of bogus and desperate arguments in court seeking to avoid discovery of how they handled legal clients’ medical care, AZA supported her like mad. “The AZA lawyers were like fire ants standing up for me in a group. I was so grateful,” she said.  

Her AZA colleagues were amazed once again at the calm and professional way she handled herself in court, given that lawyers she worked with briefly one summer appeared to have concocted varying things about her to try to get themselves out of a jam.  The Texas First Court of Appeals just affirmed the trial court’s denial of the motions based on those arguments against her. 

Everything Karina has been through has led her to being the calm, cool lawyer who is great at cross, enriches the trial team and can still save lives on the side. 

She recalls the first time she saw a Code Blue at a hospital and how the team worked together in “beautiful chaos.” She compares that to being on a trial team and a different kind of chaos. 

“I felt tremendous guilt for moving to a career where the payoff is often money rather than saving lives. But the episode with Angie helped,” she said.  

They both feel Karina was meant to be in that place at that time. Many of her colleagues are better for it.