18 minute read
Steve Chiscano Lives By His Family Mantra
Good Work, Practice Humility and Kindness, and Give Back in Service
By June Moynihan
Photos by Al Rendon
Steve Chiscano’s lifelong friends will tell you that to know Steve is to know the Chiscano family because the values instilled by Steve’s family have become the hallmarks of his professional reputation.
Steve’s father, Dr. Alfonso “Chico” Chiscano, was a larger-than-life heart surgeon, philanthropist, and cultural ambassador for San Antonio. Born in Tenerife, Canary Islands, he studied medicine in Barcelona, Spain, graduating first in his medical school class. Dr. Chiscano immigrated to Detroit, Michigan, to study cardiothoracic surgery, a specialty reserved for Spain’s elite classes and, thus, unavailable to the young Dr. Chiscano if he stayed in Spain. While in Detroit, he met Mary Alice, a nurse and professor in the Wayne State nursing program. Eventually, the Chiscanos (with their two eldest children) relocated to Houston, where Dr. Chiscano had earned a Clinical Fellowship with the famed Dr. Denton Cooley, the first surgeon to successfully implant an artificial heart.
While living in Houston, Chico and Mary Alice drove to San Antonio to visit the Alamo and Riverwalk. They were surprised to learn that Bexar County was founded by Canary Islanders, and that began the Chiscanos’ magnetic attraction to San Antonio. Soon after, they moved to San Antonio to open a private medical practice.
Mary Alice devoted herself to keeping the family in order while her husband built a reputation throughout South Texas and performed heart surgeries nearly seven days a week. The Chiscano family home was a sprawling hub of activity devoted to their four children—Kristie, Steve, Carina, and Todd—and their various interests. Friends were treated as extended family and, to this day, friends of her children will visit Mary Alice if they are passing through town.
Now that all of her children are successful adults in their own professions, Mary Alice is keen to say that she does not have a favorite child, but “four favorite children.” This is a diplomatic declaration because recently, Steve—as the only child who still lives in San Antonio near his mother—signed off a family text as “Mom’s favorite child,” causing his siblings to protest via text for the next twenty minutes. This joke resurrected the old family dynamic of Steve’s throwing a comic grenade at his siblings, and Mary Alice tamping the emotions to minimize the damage.
Mary Alice says she is lucky that all of her children are thoughtful, kind, and generous, even when they are being playful. She says the most common comment she hears about Steve is that he is loyal to his friends, a trait he has had since childhood. “If you have Steve as a friend, you have a friend for life,” she adds.
Do Good Work
Dr. Chiscano wanted his eldest son, Steve, to follow in his footsteps and practice medicine, but Steve’s mother knew he was wired to be a lawyer. As she explains, “My son was a handful. As a toddler, if he didn’t want to do something, he would throw himself on the floor and just not do it. And once he started to talk, he was very argumentative. It seemed like whatever I wanted to do, Steve would want the opposite, and he’d want to debate the details before participating in any activity.” She confesses her coping strategy was surrender: “I just learned to live with it and scheduled time to argue with Steve before we went anywhere.”
Fortunately, SABA President Steve Chiscano found a way to channel that contrarian energy into a successful career as an attorney. “I got lucky,” Steve demurs. “My introduction to the law started when I was just nineteen years old. It helped me define the work I wanted to pursue.”
Steve’s first job was as a clerk/gofer with Bayne Snell and Krause. It was the summer after Steve’s freshman year at UT-Austin, and he became immersed in the way Barry Snell, Don Krause, and Jorge Vega practiced law. He remembers them as “compassionate people, working hard and doing what is right for their clients.” When Vega joined the Texas Attorney General’s office as the First Assistant, Steve applied for a job in the Attorney General’s mailroom. “I got to learn about public policy and meet government officials,” Steve recalls. “It was mind-expanding.”
While spending his college breaks in San Antonio, Steve met and became friends with Pedro Roca de Togore, a St. Mary’s University student from Spain, who happened to be the heir to the Ducas de Bejar. This friendship increased Steve’s connections with new people throughout the world, culminating in the adventure of a lifetime when he was a guest on the infamous cruise ship, the MS Achille Lauro. He remembers it as 600 young adults’ biggest spring break. “It was a peek behind the curtain of how the extremely powerful live. I enjoyed a week of rubbing shoulders with scions of business, moguls, and royalty. The liner sank the following year. It was a week to remember and probably the best party that ship ever hosted.”
Not one to shun a good time, Steve jokes that he majored in Beta Theta Pi fraternity at UT-Austin. He spent his junior year abroad in Spain, perfecting his fluency in Spanish. After his school year abroad was over, he and a guitar-playing friend busked for tourists to earn enough money to extend their travels another few weeks. Graduating with a double major in International Business and Spanish, with only a middling GPA and resume highlights of fraternity accolades, however, was not a recipe for law school admission. “I came off of this incredible period of my life of amazing college years and exceptional travel experiences, and then the real world clobbered me with reality when I was not accepted by any law schools,” Steve explains.
The rejection made Steve more determined to become a lawyer. He decided his best chance was at St. Mary’s University School of Law. At the time, the Dean of St. Mary’s University School of Law was Barbara Bader Aldave, who refused his dogged requests for a meeting. “She relayed a message to me to work for one year and reapply. I advise anyone applying for law school to have good grades and a stellar LSAT score, but since I did not have those and did not want to wait, I kept politely requesting a meeting. I sat in Dean Aldave’s waiting room for hours. After three of these awkward visits, she yielded, and I used my in-person visit to implore her to give me a chance.”
Dean Aldave relented only slightly by offering Steve a conditional opportunity. He would be considered for a seat in the incoming class only if they had an available slot and he performed perfectly in a summer preparatory program taught by Professor (later Dean) Charles Cantú. Steve earned a 4.0 and a lifetime fan in Cantú, who shares, “Steve had decided he wanted to be there and worked hard, so no law school dean or professor would regret having him in a class or question if he belonged there.” He continues, “Fifty-two years on faculty has given me some insight on this. Law school requires a level of maturity, and some work and life experience can make the difference in law school success.”
Steve displayed the same tenacity throughout law school, and it paid off. “The most impressive thing I saw in Steve was his work ethic,” reports Ricardo Cedillo. Steve joined Cedillo’s law firm as a first-year law student clerk and worked at the firm throughout law school until he joined as an associate after graduation. Cedillo adds, “It wasn’t just a big number of in-person hours. Steve produced exceptional work product. He pays close attention to detail but also has the right instinct to distinguish what is important and what is noise in a case. Polishing innate skills is much easier than teaching them from scratch, so it was easy to teach and trust Steve as a colleague.”
Steve confesses, “I was serious about law school and being with people who were all focused on the same thing.” Steve built his law firm experience by working full-time in the summers and throughout his 2L and 3L years. He had a 3L first-semester internship at the Supreme Court of Texas with Justice John Cornyn. He worked Monday through Thursday in Austin and drove back to San Antonio to work at the Davis Cedillo Mendoza law firm Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. His law partner and St. Mary’s classmate, David Angulo, remembers, “We were both working with Cedillo and studying for the bar. We would report to work at 4 a.m. so we could work a full eight hours before we left at noon for our bar review course. It was eat, sleep, work, study, repeat, that entire summer.”
Practice Humility and Kindness
While the years of law school and launching a legal career could be grueling, Steve says, “I am energized by work. I learned from my mentors and former bosses to find something you’re good at—that helps somebody—and surround yourself with people you enjoy working with. The rest will come.” This mentality has served Steve and his colleagues well. His current business partners Dave Angulo, Henry Gonzalez, and Richard Kasson are similarly wired, and Angulo and Gonzalez also worked at the Davis Cedillo Mendoza firm before the four founded their firm Gonzalez Chiscano Angulo and Kasson (“GCAK”).
GCAK’s newest associate, Nadeen Abou-Hossa, joined the firm in late 2022, after working as a staff attorney with the Fourth Court of Appeals. “Steve is a natural mentor. I think a lot of his expectations derive from how he was trained by generous bosses. He doesn’t give me time to second guess myself. He trusts my ability.” Nadeen had her first trial just a few months after joining the firm. “I am treated as a valued colleague. My law school friends are often surprised by the complex legal work I get to handle as a first-year litigator.”
Steve’s office is filled with files, and the walls are covered with tenyear-old crayon drawings from his now-teenage daughter beside highend, framed art pieces. Displayed on top of the bookcases are thick leather-bound binders with gold lettering. When asked, he shares that each binder is a memento that represents a big case. What Steve does not say is that one binder represents a $600-million judgment; another represents a settlement exceeding $33 million; and several others are take-nothing judgments of multimillion and billion-dollar claims. His practice is high-stakes commercial litigation, and the risks to his clients are potentially life-changing.
Cedillo remembers, “Steve is always about the client. He always made my life easier. He doesn’t have it in him to say he is too busy or that he can’t do it.” Cedillo recalls it was a blow when Steve left to start his own firm. He admits that while he was unhappy to see Steve and Gonzalez, Angulo, and Kasson go, he understood their desire to build something of their own. “Today, we work together sometimes, and we are opposing counsel sometimes. Either way, it is a good day of work when I get to work with Steve.”
When Steve and his partners founded GCAK, Steve carried with him not only excellent legal skills, but also important life lessons from his time working with Cedillo. “We always said, ‘family first,’ and if your only motivation to practice law is to make a gazillion dollars, more power to you, but I don’t know if you are going to be happy,” Cedillo predicts. “Law is a service profession, and you look out for and serve your clients. Hours and billing will take care of themselves.”
The GCAK lawyers have maintained the importance of their lives beyond the practice of law. Angulo shares, “Our attorneys do whatever we need to do to get the work done. We all genuinely enjoy doing legal work and solving complex problems, but our families are our priority. We go to school events. We go on vacations.” He shares that “it makes a difference when you trust your colleagues,” and that he does not view the GCAK “workplace or workload as a grind.” Abou-Hossa agrees, “It is a semi-predictable cycle. When it is busy, or we are in trial, I am hyper-focused. But I see my family and friends, and I schedule time away. I don’t have to pretend to be busy billing to impress my boss. My work-life balance is pretty good.” Steve embodies these values by placing paramount importance on his own family. “Steve is a great business partner, but first, he is a great dad,” says Henry B. Gonzalez, IV. “He has great parent role models, and that work ethic, decency, and kindheartedness is part of everything Steve does.”
Dr. Alfonso “Chico” Chiscano
Dr. Alfonso “Chico” Chiscano was celebrated not only for being a renowned heart surgeon, but also for serving as a cultural ambassador for San Antonio. In his lifetime, he performed more than 6,000 heart surgeries and was greeted routinely by strangers thanking him for saving a loved one. He was a devoted teacher and a Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Dr. Chiscano was part of San Antonio’s Tricentennial Commission and instrumental in hosting King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain at the festivities. He was a team delegate for securing the UNESCO World Heritage designation for the San Antonio Missions and a leader in the San Fernando Cathedral restoration. Leadership was a family business, and Mary Alice was always by his side. When Dr. Chiscano passed away in 2019, social and print media were filled with condolence messages from around the world, and at his funeral Mass, San Antonio civic leaders were shoulderto-shoulder. While Steve did not follow his father’s footsteps into a medical career, he has continued the family legacy of honoring and strengthening the ties between Spain and San Antonio. In 2020, Steve was appointed Honorary Consul of Spain in San Antonio. In that role, Steve provides diplomatic and consular services to Spanish citizens living and/or traveling in the United States, and more specifically in San Antonio and the surrounding counties.
Steve has three children, Niko (19), Christian (15), and Alexandra a/k/a Birdie (13). His free time is spent shuttling the youngest to various activities and driving his clan to UT-Austin football games (to please himself) and to College Station for A&M football games (to please Niko). The kids are graduates of many family road trips, but for this year’s adventure, Birdie asked that they fly instead, to preserve more time to explore Montana’s Glacier National Park and Yellowstone. “The kids and I have such great memories of these long, ‘stop whenever you want’ road trips, but we are probably migrating toward ‘airfare required’ now,” Steve confesses nostalgically.
High School Classmate Jason Speights
Local attorney and MacArthur High School classmate, Jason Speights, recalls that his friendship with Steve has not changed much since high school. “Steve had layers of friends and was flexible in moving between groups. He was nice to, and well-liked by, everyone.” Steve played snare drum in the marching band drumline. He was also a top student academically and served in student government. Their shared ‘80s high school experience was pretty tame. Jason recalls a McArthur powder puff game with girls sporting shoulder pads to play flag football and boys in cheer skirts doing flips off a mini trampoline as the height of subversive teen behavior. “Steve and I were cheer squad for a day. Steve had been a gymnast, so he put on a real show for the crowd.” Despite Speights’ attending college at A&M and law school at the University of Houston, the friends remained close.
Speights eventually returned to live in San Antonio a few years after law school graduation. He recalls, “Steve’s dad rented out the Buckhorn Saloon for Steve’s 30th birthday party. There were a lot of St. Mary’s law school friends, and I didn’t know them. Most guests were with dates, and there were Steve and I at the front, both single and forlorn. The band starts up, but no one is dancing. Next thing I know, I’m meeting Sister Grace for the first time, and she drags me out on the dance floor. There is an awkward photo somewhere of me and Sister Grace, she’s a good dancer, and I’m just an accessory.” Steve was eager to introduce Jason to a classmate and the first thing she smirks to him is, “Oh, you’re the guy who ‘danced’ with Sister Grace.” That classmate, Laura Crandall, eventually became Jason’s wife, and he recalls, “It was a pretty memorable night for me in a lot of ways.” Steve continues to influence future Speights generations as godfather to Jason and Laura’s youngest daughter.
Give Back in Service to Others
St. Mary’s University School of Law Campus Minister Sister Grace Walle shares that she was just starting her job at St. Mary’s when she was introduced to a group of students over lunch. “Law students were unfamiliar territory. My impression was that these students were bright and enthusiastic. And this one young redhead named Steve was energetic and had a delightful sense of humor,” she recalls.
Sister Grace explained that those were the days before pro bono clinics, so student community service projects were not legal service clinics. The service projects were hands-on, get dirty type things. “Steve and his section mates always volunteered.” She recalls that the biggest project was building a garden for Catholic workers, and that the students rented a tiller, built a fence, and planted the garden, all in a day.
One law student section had become very fond of their professor, Charles Cantú, and approached Sister Grace asking how they could honor him. They settled on launching an unrestricted Cantú Fund for the Future that Sister Grace could administer for community service projects. The fund remains active to this day and, at the height of need, funded stipends for seventy-two student coordinators in eight Texas cities to provide services through various legal services nonprofits. Professor Cantú was very touched by the gesture. “That was a special class. Most professors will tell you that they will really connect with one or two students, each year. In 1997, I made a connection with an entire section,” Cantú added. Although he has lots of memorabilia, the photo of him with Section Two is framed and hangs in his office.
Sister Grace recalls that the students planned a big gala fundraiser to launch the fund. “It was at that point that I learned that these humble law students belonged to some VIP San Antonio families. They used their connections to sell tickets and even got some free advertising in the newspaper’s society page.” As Professor Cantú fondly remembers and Jeanne Jakle wrote in her Express News column of upcoming events, it was the “hottest ticket in town.” Sister Grace concludes, “It did end up being a great party and successful fundraiser. If the columnist only knew it was a group of students, led by a nun, honoring a senior professor!”
Sister Grace reveals that her friendship with Steve is special because she feels like they came up together, marking their first year at St. Mary’s together. Their friendship endures, and she happily follows his career and celebrates his professional accomplishments and tenures in leadership. “Serving as president of the San Antonio Bar Association is a natural fit for Steve. He’s a gifted leader, and SABA will benefit from his servant heart.” The apple does not fall far from the tree. “Steve learned from his family and mentors to do good work, to practice humility and kindness, and to give back in service. It’s hard to go wrong with that combination.”
