Career
Pike passed the California State Bar examination his first try and was admitted as a lawyer in June 1967. He was appointed as a commissioner in Los Angeles Superior Court, Family Law Division, from 1973 until the mid 1990s. The Daily Journal profiled Pike in a January 5, 1982 article while he sat on the bench. In the mid 1970s, he taught children's rights at University of La Verne College of Law and psychology and the law at Claremont Graduate University.
The Daily Journal, in its obituary about Pike, described his impoverished beginnings in a Nebraska family of nine children as a "Grapes of Wrath-esque exodus to California and his early job as a child working as a farm laborer. The paper titled the article "Jurist Fought for Gay Rights Before it was Popular." While a lawyer in private practice, Pike drafted contracts for gay men and women "that emulated the rights of married couples," the paper wrote. The Daily Journal also described Pike's work for gay rights as groundbreaking and "three decades before it was fashionable."
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