{personality}

Sylvia is a hyper intelligent workaholic who, after a rocky childhood and being raised by a single Mother, has what can only be described as 'trust issues'. She isn't particularly chatty, but enjoys the company of friends and tends to communicate more with a glance or a smile than anything else. She is prone to 'resting bitch face' which can sometimes make for bad first impressions, but it is excellent for intimidating opposing counsel. The idea of romance scares her, so she considers sex to be a necessary activity for health and wellness rather than something attached to emotion. People often describe Sylvia as 'tightly wound'. Her preferred modes of 'unwinding' are with drinking, sex, and marathons of investigation discovery (in that order). She has a massive ego, and is a very sore loser. Anyone that spends enough time with her, however, will find that she has a wicked sense of humor.

{paraLLEls+}

-Sylvia's surname "Sonowa" is actually an anagram of Lady Shiva's real name: Woo-San.

-The death of Lady Shiva's sister Carolyn was what allowed her to reach her full potential as a martial artist. The death of Sylvia's sister Christine was what motivated her to become a lawyer.

-Lady Shiva was known as one of the (if not the) greatest martial artists on earth. Sylvia is a highly skilled Krav Maga student and instructor.

-Lady Shiva was an expert in reading body language, which allowed her anticipate the moves of her opponents. Sylvia is very skilled at reading people emotionally- she can often sense a lie (or the absence of truth) which helps her in court proceedings.

-Shiva and Sylvia both share a strong sense of honor. Shiva has respect for those she has learned from and the code of ethics they live by, and Sylvia, too, holds those who have helped her in high regard.

{history}

Li Sonowa was born to first generation Chinese immigrants in New York City in 1948. She was an accomplished young woman considering the difficulty that comes with growing up with immigrant parents, both of whom did not speak English. Li was an excellent student, however, and after graduating high school she worked on Madison Avenue for one year before she married Jin Park. They had a daughter, Christine, the same year Jin was drafted and sent to Vietnam. A year later, he was dead.

The loss of Jin sent Li into a serious depression, and her desire to be a Mother vanished with his memory. Li developed an addiction to various prescription drugs, which led to the abuse of other substances, and eventually she began doing what women so often did to pay for drugs without money. Selling herself didn't come without consequences, and in 1979, Sylvia was born. The first three years of her life were spent in foster care before Li finally turned things around enough to regain custody. Christine, however, had fallen down a path of no return- she followed in the footsteps of her mother. She dropped out of high school, would go missing for weeks at a time, and seemed to only reappear to beg Li for money. Valuable items from the home almost always went missing after these visits.

Despite Christine's problems, Sylvia idolized her sister. She was too young to understand that world, and only knew the beautiful woman that brought her candy and called her Sylly while promising she'd "be back soon."

Eventually, Christine stopped visiting completely. They'd get word from mutual friends that she'd been spotted in Brooklyn, or that she'd moved to Boston with her boyfriend, but she never wrote or called. Sylvia threw herself into her school work and vented her frustrations out in Martial Arts classes. Eventually she fell in love with Krav Maga, convinced she wanted to be a master and spend her life travelling the world teaching and fighting. Sylvia attended Columbia University in New York at her Mother's request, but did the minimum required of her as she focused on her training. She lazily majored in Chinese.

In 2001, just after Sylvia graduted from Columbia, Christine's body was found abandoned in an apartment bedroom. The Medical Examiner ruled it a drug overdose. Sylvia was devestated by the loss of her sister, and despite having not seen her in years, it changed the course of her life forever. She applied to law school, obsessed with the idea of justice and righting wrongs. To her, Christine had been murdered. Murdered by the choices and behavior of others, behavior that should have had consequences. Whether or not she went for the right reasons, she excelled at Suffolk University Law School. It was during her study there that she interned at the District Attorney's office. The DA at that time, Cormac Tynan, generously offered her a job at his private family law firm after she graduated.

It was Cormac's son, Ronan, that convinced her to leave the firm after Cormac's death years later. Ronan won the race for District Attorney by a landslide after his Father's murder in 2010, and the events reminded Sylvia of exactly why she'd wanted to become a lawyer in the first place. The work she got to do as an ADA in homicide was far more rewarding than anything she'd done in years.

{STORYLINES}