Once Todd Albin decided to become a lawyer, he wanted to do it the fastest way possible. In his senior year at Irving's MacArthur High School, the popular quarterback asked advice from attorney friends. "They advised me to go into El Centro's legal assistant program to see if I really wanted to be an attorney," he says.

It wasn't an easy decision for Todd as he watched his friends graduate and head off to four-year universities, which he certainly had the grades and means to do. But he was dead set on getting to his goal as quickly as possible, and he respected the advice he'd been given. As it turned out, personal attention from DCCCD faculty combined with on-the-job experience sharply increased his career learning curve.

"Early on, instructor Dudley Knox sought me out in his class and told me a downtown law firm was looking for a runner," remembers Todd. "I learned how to file, set hearings, basically how to be a lawyer. My first year in the El Centro legal assistant program was like my first year in law school."

After earning his associate degree, he transferred to UNT, where he earned his bachelor's degree, then to Baylor University to earn a law degree. He continued to work for a large downtown law firm doing commercial  litigation and sat on El Centro's advisory committee to certify its legal assistant program. "Through the years, some of the same clerks and bailiffs are there from when I first started working as a runner," he says. "One of them still calls me 'El Centro boy.'"

In 1999, Todd's brother-in-law Curtis Harrison asked him if he'd be interested in being his partner in a small law firm he was starting in Frisco. Today, Albin & Harrison is outgrowing its 5,000-square-foot space and is on its way to "being one of the biggest firms in Collin County, we hope," says Todd.

But Todd says that his community college experience early on is what made him the lawyer he is today. "My experience at community college was a life-changing event," he says.  "The practical knowledge I took into my career path was invaluable, and can't be measured in dollars. I learned how to do my job on a daily basis - it's the smartest thing I've ever done."

For Todd Albin, it all began here.