Todd wins Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award.

After Stephen M. Todd worked a pro bono child dependency case in the Tampa Bay area several years ago, he couldn't refuse taking on additional cases, despite the tragedies he saw.

He once represented a boy whose mother's method of discipline was to ram her son's head against a wall until he fell unconscious.

In another matter, he entered a home, which was actually a filthy hotel room, where the mother was so drugged by fentanyl and oxycodone, she couldn't get up to feed her three small children.

Such cases are commonplace in Florida, according to Todd, and we can't turn a blind eye.

Todd's message at the Supreme Court, upon accepting the most prestigious statewide honor for pro bono service--the 2018 Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award--was to ask attorneys to take a pro bono case this year. Just one.

Because just a single case changed the course of Todd's future as an attorney, and he has donated more than 2,000 pro bono hours over his 27 years as a Florida Bar member.

"The problem is there is an epidemic of child neglect and abuse in our state and in our nation. And the problem is getting worse. Every weekday, courtrooms in Florida are jam packed with children and their caregivers looking for solutions from an overworked court system ...," Todd said. "A starting point to help deal with this epidemic problem is if many people stand up and say, 'I am for the child,' and then act on it."

Todd, who works at the Hillsborough County Attorney's Office in Tampa, explained that in Hillsborough alone, 1,650 children were sheltered in 2017. That's four children per day, he said, removed from their homes, placed into an unfamiliar system, requiring that their cases are worked. Each child needs an advocate, Todd implored, and "caseworkers are overwhelmed."

Rosemary Armstrong, the 2012 winner of the Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award, started an organization called Crossroads for Florida Kids in Tampa, where Todd said he became more comfortable advocating for children.

"I can't fix everything in these children's lives. It was a mess before I got there, it will be a mess after I leave," Todd said. "But I can do a little bit for them. I can listen to them. I can be their advocate when no one has ever advocated for them. I can show them what it means to care. I can give them my best advice. I can...