{"id":356415,"date":"2021-11-24T06:05:56","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T20:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=356415"},"modified":"2021-11-24T06:05:56","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T20:05:56","slug":"former-ag-kara-passes-away-at-76","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/former-ag-kara-passes-away-at-76\/","title":{"rendered":"Former AG Kara passes away at 76"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Maya B. Kara<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Former CNMI Attorney General Maya B. Kara passed away Friday morning at her home on Capital Hill after a long battle with cancer. She was 76.<\/p>\n

Kara served as the CNMI attorney general from 1998 to 2000 and served several times as president of the NMI Bar Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was my best friend. We were together for 43 years,\u201d said Kara\u2019s husband, Bruce Mailman, in a phone interview last night.<\/p>\n

Kara and Mailman have three children.<\/p>\n

He said that Kara spent a year in Honolulu to get treatment soon after was first diagnosed with cancer in 2012.<\/p>\n

Mailman said they\u2019re going to have a public viewing Wednesday next week, at 9am at the Borja Funeral Home for an hour before the cremation.<\/p>\n

Mailman said that Kara was instrumental in the development of the law of the CNMI.<\/p>\n

Mailman said he and Kara arrived together on Saipan on Feb. 17, 1989, where she worked as counsel for the CNMI House of Representatives. After a while, he said, Kara became the chief legal counsel for the CNMI Legislature, a position that she held for nine and a half years.<\/p>\n

Kara then served as acting attorney general. She became counsel for then-governor Pedro P. Tenorio in the latter\u2019s third and last term.<\/p>\n

Kara also served as counsel for then-lieutenant governor Diego Benavente, as an administrative hearing officer for the CNMI Department of Labor, and also as an administrative hearing officer for the NMI Retirement Fund.<\/p>\n

Kara and Mailman\u2019s law firm is a known expert in immigration matters and the couple periodically wrote a column for Saipan Tribune on immigration issues.<\/p>\n

At a naturalization ceremony in August 2014 at the U.S. District Court for the NMI, Kara served as a guest speaker during which she shared her remarkable immigrant story that landed her in New York as a political refugee at age 11 when she and her family escaped to the West from Hungary.<\/p>\n

Kara spent her childhood in Hungary, a small country in central Europe. At that time, during the Cold war, Hungary was under the rule of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

Kara became a U.S. citizen at 18.<\/p>\n

Janet H. King said yesterday that Kara provided her some guidance and inspiration as a young lawyer.<\/p>\n

King said she will always remember Kara for her brilliant legal mind, and her devotion to her family and her service to the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy condolences to Bruce and the family on Maya Kara\u2019s passing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former CNMI Attorney General Maya B. Kara passed away Friday morning at her home on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":356417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-356415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}