Staff
Bonne Beavers
Bonne came to the Center for Justice in the summer of 2001 by a circuitous route. A Texan by birth, she has lived in Colorado, New Mexico, California, Wyoming, New York, Maine,
and Washington state during her adulthood. Bonne received her undergraduate degree in Russian Area Studies from Colorado College in 1974. She undertook various jobs after college, including writing for the wire service United Press International and instructing for Outward Bound. Along with her son and husband, she spent seven years sailing around the world on a small boat. Back ashore, she attended the University of Colorado’s School of Law and graduated Order of the Coif in 1999. Bonne then worked as a clerk for Judge Daniel Hale and as a public defender in Boulder, Colorado, before making her way to Spokane. She is a rabid bicyclist whose motto is: start slow and taper off.
Heather Beebe-Stevens
Heather joined the Center for Justice on June 30, 2008 as Development Director. A native Oregonian, she moved to Cleveland, Ohio for graduate school, where she met her husband, 
Christopher, a native Louisianian. Together they moved first to northeast Pennsylvania before returning to Cleveland. Heather successfully persuaded Chris that the best place to live was the Northwest, and when an opportunity arose, they quickly began packing their daughter, Isabelle and cat, Tabitha for the move. Heather loves reading, music and movies, and has sworn to herself that some day, she will run a marathon…though she hasn’t yet set a date to actually do it.
Breean Beggs
Breean has been the Center for Justice’s chief catalyst since February 2004. His law practice emphasizes the rights of individuals against companies and government agencies 
discriminating against people based on race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or their free expression of ideas. Prior to joining the Center, he practiced law for 12 years in Bellingham, Washington, with Brett & Daugert, where he focused on plaintiff’s personal injury, civil rights, and timber trespass. Breean graduated from Whitworth College in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in international studies and then attended the University of Washington School of Law, graduating in 1991 as Order of the Coif. Breean has volunteered in his community with the Volunteer Lawyer Program, the ACLU, the Literacy Council, the Washington State Trial Lawyers, the Washington State Young Lawyers Division, his church, and youth sports programs. He and his wife, Laurie Powers, are raising three children together near Manito Park. Breean loves to run, play soccer and basketball, read science fiction, and talk politics.
Tim Connor
Tim joined the Center’s staff in February 2008 to work on communications projects and to help initiate a new CFJ project to audit compliance with state open government rules. Tim 
was named the Outstanding Graduate in Journalism at Washington State University in 1979 and in his career as a journalist has won several national and regional investigative reporting awards. As a Center client in 2005, Tim won a unanimous Washington Supreme Court decision in an important public records case stemming from his investigation of Spokane’s River Park Square scandal. In the 1990s, he was one of the country’s leading public interest advocates attacking government secrecy, environmental contamination, and social injustices related to American nuclear weapons production and testing activities. The son of a science teacher, he has testified before both houses of Congress and presented before the National Academies of Science and Institute of Medicine. He has served on three federal advisory committees and was one of the founders of what is now the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. He lives in west Spokane with his wife, Connie Raybuck, and their children Audrey and Devin. Tim grew up playing football on muddy fields in Panama where he played quarterback on two championship teams. He now enjoys golf, bird-watching, biking and long swims in lakes and rivers.
Rick Eichstaedt
Rick is the Spokane Riverkeeper as of May 2009 and continues to serve as the Center for Justice’s Spokane River attorney. He represents organizations working to protect and restore the Spokane River watershed, which includes the Spokane-
Rathdrum Aquifer and Lake Coeur d’Alene. Prior to joining the Center, Rick had the honor of representing the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho for seven years on a variety of environmental, natural resource, cultural resource, and treaty-rights protection cases. Rick received a B.A. in political science and anthropology from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. And he received his J.D. and a certificate in environmental and natural resources law from the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Originally from Minnesota, Rick has always loved lakes and rivers, so it’s no surprise that he serves on the board of Idaho Rivers United, as well as the board of the Environmental and Natural Resource Section of the Idaho State Bar. Rick is an avid whitewater rafter, hiker, and backpacker — though lately, his attention has been focused on his son Noah, born in May 2004.
Cathy Johnson
Cathy joined the Center for Justice September 1, 2008, as a paralegal. Prior to working with the Center, she has worked for
attorneys for the past 22 years and with the Center’s “of Counsel” attorney Jeffry Finer for eight of those years. Cathy grew up in Wenatchee, Washington and has been a Washingtonian all her life. Outside of her legal work, she is a devoted sportswoman and has a special passion for working with, training, and riding horses. She spent five years volunteering as the editor for the Backcountry Horsemen of Washington, producing a monthly newsletter. She currently volunteers her time with the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program. Cathy has a husband and three children who are very active in sports, hunting and fishing. There is never a dull moment around the house.
Suellen Pritchard
Suellen Pritchard’s initial connection with the Center For Justice was as a client. Later she began working at the Center
carrying out the driver re-licensing program. Since then, Suellen’s paralegal degree from Spokane Community College — as well as her life experience — have helped her develop the Center’s Community Advocacy program. She runs the program with the help of student interns from many different colleges as well as volunteers wanting to aid our community through service work. Dedicated to fulfilling the Center’s mission, the program helps low-income individuals facing many unique, and usually overlooked, problems. Suellen, a single mother of four, loves winter and water sports.
Jeffry Finer (of counsel)
In his quarter century as a lawyer, Jeff has become well known for litigating high-profile civil rights cases including the nationally known Spokane Gypsy case and a Spokane clinic picketing case in which he successfully advocated for the privacy rights of women seeking abortions. His cases have taken him to every level of the American justice system, including a 1996 case argued before the U.S. Supreme 
Court. Among the active cases Jeff brings to the Center for Justice are those involving the deaths of Otto Zehm and Trent Yohe, both of whom died while being taken into custody by Spokane area law enforcement officers. Jeff has been named Spokane’s top civil rights lawyer for three years running by Spokane Living Magazine, sharing the most recent award with CFJ chief catalyst Breean Beggs. Before moving to Spokane in 1984, Jeff earned his undergraduate degree at Yale (Fine Arts) and his law degree from the New Mexico School of Law. For the past eight years he has taught as an adjunct professor at Gonzaga Law School, focusing on courses in trial practice and criminal law. Jeff is married to Spokane physician Stacie Bering who is well known and admired in Spokane for her work as an obstetrician and, more recently, a palliative care provider and beloved teacher. They have two children: Zack is a college student in British Columbia and Cassie manages an REI store in California. Jeff loves telemark skiing and spending time in his backyard studio where he paints in oils and beeswax. If you catch him with any free time, he’s probably playing the ancient board game, Go, on the computer.