Broward County Judge Nina Di Pietro grew up wanting to be a doctor, even though she rushed her way into the world without one. “My mother didn’t quite make it to the hospital on time,” she said. “Not planned in that manner, but she had me in her apartment with my father.”

Growing up in Cooper City, Di Pietro insisted she was going into medicine, lured, in part at least, by the portrayals of the profession she saw on television.