Linda Mastandrea files for McDonald vacancy, campaign website found

She won 15 gold medals and five silver medals representing the United States at two Paralympic Games, three World Championships, the Pan American Games and the Stoke-Mandeville Wheelchair Games. Now Linda L. Mastandrea is looking to win election to the Cook County Circuit Court. She filed petitions late Monday for the countywide McDonald vacancy.

That's a link to the candidate's campaign website in the preceding paragraph; a link has been added to the blog Sidebar.

Mastandrea was born with spastic diplegia cerebral palsy and did not begin her athletic career until her college days at the University of Illinois. As the medal count suggests, she soon made up for lost time, becoming the first female Paralympian inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame.

Mastandrea has been licensed as an attorney in Illinois since 1995. Her campaign website emphasizes her service as a hearing officer for the Illinois State Board of Education, the Illinois Department of Human Services, and the Illinois Tollway Authority. A recently published page on the Chicago-Kent Law School's website salutes Mastandrea as one of 125 Kent "alumni of distinction." That article notes that Mastandrea built a practice in disability law and civil rights law and, along the way, has taught Disability Law and lectured nationwide on the Americans with Disabilities Act and other disability laws. She is also the author of a 2006, Sports and the Physically Challenged: An Encyclopedia of People, Events and Organizations.