) was a two-term attorney general of Illinois and a teenage champion of the middleweight division of the Chicago Golden Gloves.He was born in Chicago but raised in DuPage County. As a teenager, he boxed in West Side gyms and in Golden Gloves competitions. In office, he went after toxic dumpers, polluters, online fraud and gangs. He helped the Illinois Violence Prevention Initiative.
Birkett worked at a gas station and boxed at the gym in LaFollette Park. He was able to thrive in high school, where he became the football team captain and its most valuable player. As a boxer, he became a Chicago Golden Gloves light-heavyweight champ in 1974 and then the Chicago Park District light-heavyweight open champ in 1975 and 1976. His law degree is from John Marshall Law School and his sister Bernadette is married to actor George Wendt.
Jorge Pacheco sits surrounded by some of his Chicago Golden Gloves jackets and belts at his Apache business office in the South Loop, April 5, 2023.grew up in Aurora in a family in which boxing was part of life. As he recently told WTTW-Ch. 11, “It was part of our culture, boxing.” He was a teenager when he asked my father if he could join him at a gym. “He said, ‘Sure, come in,’” says Pecheco. “He wasn’t really expecting me to stick with it.
was raised in the Norwood and Jefferson Park neighborhoods on the city’s Northwest Side, one of three children. He was determined from early on to become an actor, but he became distracted and instead entered the world of graffiti writers, saying, “That was almost a full-time job. We were a crew, with a gang-like structure.” Boxing drew him away from that life, in the form of English teacher and boxing coach, Tom O’Shea.
Sikora has fashioned a terrific career, with dozens of stage, TV and movie roles. He’s currently starring in the Starz network series