A Process Server Remembers His First Serve

• July 20, 2012
• by Kimberly Faber

Process Server Steve Janney remembers a special gift on his 18th birthday: 

For most people, their 18th birthday is an iconic final step in growing up. With a new adult on their hands, parents will approach their children with inquiries of what they want for a gift, eliciting the typical responses of money, a car, or I don’t know. Many new 18-year-olds will celebrate their birthday with a trip to the club or the purchase of their first lotto ticket, but for Steve Janney, owner of Janney & Janney Associates, celebrated in a unique way he’d been planning since fourth grade.

“I guess fourth or fifth great was when I thought it would be kind of cool to be a process server,” Janney reminisced of a conversation he had with his best friend. “We were best friends and he said he was going to be an attorney and I said I was going to be his attorney service,” Janney noted. Years down the road, Bob became an attorney, and when he was in litigation, Janney worked as his attorney service.

“My first service of process was on January 23, 1969,” he said with an exuberant smile, “That was my eighteenth birthday.” Janney had been trapped in the back seat watching his father get out to serve papers for what had seemed like forever. Finally 18 and meeting California’s then requirements for becoming a process server, Janney was ready to serve his first paper.  “My dad came home, said ‘what do you want for your birthday’, and I said ‘I want to serve a paper,” Janney explained livelily. With that first paper from his father in hand and the address for a residence in Whittier, Janney’s set out for his first serve and proudly brought the return to his father.

Janney continued to serve process as a means to put himself through college. In 1981, he had completed his coursework, his family asked him to join the business for a year to help get things established. “Being part of a family business is both a plus and a minus at times,” he noted with a smile, “but it’s good to be with people you can trust.” Eventually, what was intended to be a temporary situation became a lasting career for Janney, who found that he really enjoyed serving process.

Janney proudly noted that the business was started by his father in 1954 in the spare bedroom of a two-bedroom apartment in Whittier. Janney’s brother joined the business in 1973, eight years before Janney did, and with their father’s passing 14 years ago the two brothers now run the business. Janney & Janney Associates now has several locations across California. “It gets harder the larger you get,” Janney explained, “but it’s special to be part of a family business.”

When asked if he thinks his father would be proud of where they’ve taken the company, Janney said that he hopes his dad would be prouder of the company’s integrity and values rather than how much they’ve expanded in size. “We’ve grown past the family-owned business. We have about 130 employees now,” he concluded, “but we like to say we’re still family.”

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