The bench in Division 16 looks a lot like any other in any courtroom across the three buildings at the Weld County Judicial Center.
But whoever takes that bench on Friday will have quite the pair of shoes to fill.
Weld District Judge Marcelo Kopcow retires Thursday after 20 years as a district judge and 31 years as part of the 19th Judicial District — which consists of the entirety of Weld County.
“It’s been a great ride, a fantastic ride,” Kopcow said. “I’m very, very blessed.”
Judge Marcelo Kopcow works inside an empty office while finishing out his service as a judge for the 19th Judicial District on Friday, July 11, 2025.(Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)Kopcow came to Weld County in 1994 as a deputy district attorney. In 2002, he became the Greeley Municipal Court judge, and in 2003, he moved up to a spot as a Weld County Court judge. One year later, he became the youngest district judge in Colorado at just 37 years old.
After two decades, he long ago aged out of being the youngest. Now, for a couple more days, he carries the distinction of one of the longest-tenured and most-experienced judges in the state.
“The more life experience you get, the more wisdom you get. You see the world a little differently,” Kopcow said. “Am I still the same person I was when I was 37 years old as a district judge? No. I’ve matured, and I have a better feel what it’s like to be a parent and what it’s like to be a husband.”
Over the past 20 years, Kopcow has found himself presiding over countless cases of local interest, plenty of regional interest and even a few cases that grabbed national attention.
In this file photo, Judge Marcelo Kopcow speaks to the attorneys during the bond hearing for Chris Watts in August 2018 in Weld District Court in Greeley. (Joshua Polson/Greeley Tribune file photo)In 2018, he handled the case of Chris Watts, who is spending life in prison for the murder of his wife and two daughters.
In 2010, he oversaw the murder trial of Marcello Maldonado Perez — who was found guilty more than 30 years after he murdered Mary Pierce in 1977 and dumped her body in a cornfield west of Greeley.
In 2009, Kopcow was the judge in the trial for the murder of Angie Zapata — the first successful prosecution of a hate crime against a transgender victim in the United States.
In total, he’s presided over more than 300 jury trials and 37 murder cases in Weld County.
“Not all murder cases are on Dateline and Netflix, but they’re all equally important, right?” Kopcow said. “They’re all tragic. They’re tragic for the victim. They’re tragic for the defendant, who’s now serving a lengthy prison sentence.”
And though most people know Kopcow for the high-profile criminal cases he presided over, he’s touched had a hand in just about every aspect of law since becoming a judge.
“My career is not just criminal,” Kopcow said. “I did divorces, custody, dependency, neglect cases, adoption, probate, civil. I’ve done a little bit of everything.”
How it came to be
Kopcow’s parents immigrated from Argentina in 1963. He didn’t speak a lick of English until he was in first grade.
“Believe it or not, I learned English by watching Sesame Street back in the day,” he said.
Kopcow’s parents instilled an ethos of constantly attacking the next opportunity in him from just about the minute he was born.
“My parents came to this country, uneducated, poor, and look at all the opportunities I had,” he said. “This is an amazing country, right? I took advantage of every opportunity that came my way. So I feel blessed to be this public servant.”
While he now says he would put his range of experiences as a judge against anyone’s in the state, Kopcow’s career behind the bench was never supposed to be. He was originally pursuing a career in law enforcement.
While attending Northeastern University in Boston, he did a handful of externships at the Drug Enforcement Administration at both the Boston and New York field offices. He was slated to go full time when he graduated.
Then, in 1985 a good friend of his was shot and killed in the line of duty.
“That kind of changed my plans,” Kopcow said. “I was traumatized by that, and I decided that I was going to go into the law instead of law enforcement.”
For Kopcow, who admits he had never really met a lawyer before, it seemed like a pivot out of left field. But as a son of parents who didn’t speak English, he had been arguing and advocating for years before he even made it north to Boston.
“My brother and I were often advocates for my family,” Kopcow said. “Talking to the landlord or calling about the phone bill or whatever it was. So it came very natural.”
He began taking night classes at New York Law School, quickly picking up a daytime job at a New York City law firm. He noticed that all the people he looked up to all had one thing in common: they had spent time as prosecutors for a district attorney’s office.
“It was one of those big Manhattan firms that probably had over 100 lawyers, and the lawyers I respected the most were former prosecutors who were now litigators,” he said. “Even though I was going to law school at night, they taught me so much during the day. That’s how I first kind of got a spark in, ‘OK, I’m going to be a lawyer.’ ”
Kopcow had an opportunity to stay at that firm, turning down a six-figure offer in 1994 — one that would be closer to $220,000 inflation-adjusted to 2025 — for a different, admittedly, much less lucrative opportunity.
“I just had this strong belief in public service,” he said. “I think it’s really important. I could have chased the dollar and made more money working privately — and I don’t blame anybody for doing that. I just felt this sense of trying to give back to the community.”
On Sept. 6, 1993, Time magazine printed a cover donning the Rocky Mountains of Colorado titled “Boom Time in the Rockies.” The cover story talked about how the area, once the home of cowboys and lumberjacks, had become a magnet for lone-eagle telecommuters and Range Rover-driving yuppies.
It also sounded pretty appealing to at least one fast-talking New Yorker.
“Colorado was very exciting back then, because there was so much growth and opportunity and young people moving in,” Kopcow said. “And things were relatively cheap. It just felt like there were so many opportunities here, especially for a young person who wants to start a family. So I was able to do things here that I never could have in New York.”
Ever since his plane touched down at Stapleton Airport — less than a year before the opening of the Denver International Airport, which was one of the selling points of that Time magazine article — he was off.
He and his soon-to-be wife moved from New York in May. In July, he took the bar exam. And though his wife told him she “wasn’t marrying somebody who couldn’t get a job,” she must have had at least a little faith in him, because without yet knowing the results, the two married in September.
Thankfully for Kopcow, he passed. And by the end of the year, he had himself a position with the Weld County District Attorney’s Office.
“I thought Greeley was like a suburb of Denver. I thought it was just a few minutes out of town,” he said. “Then I hopped on Highway 85, and it said 42 more miles. … I just kept driving north, and I have great memories in the district attorney’s office.”
Kopcow originally didn’t have any intentions of leaving the district attorney’s office. He sure didn’t have any plans of becoming a judge.
“I never had an aspiration to be a judge,” he said. “I was pretty satisfied in the district attorney’s office.”
And though the Greeley municipal judge position he eventually took opened up mere blocks from the district attorney’s office where he worked, Kopcow was hours away camping when he first learned about the opening.
Trying to get a fire started, he grabbed the Sunday newspaper that had been recently delivered and started crumpling it up.
“As I was doing that, I see an ad for an opening for municipal judge for the city of Greeley. I swear to you,” Kopcow said. “My first thought was, ‘How do I not know about this? I’m a DA in Greeley. How do I not know the municipal judge is leaving?’ ”
At just 35, he was rather young to apply for the job. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to apply. But after a lot encouragement from his wife on the drive home, Kopcow decided to go for it.
“I came back and applied, and I got the job,” he said. “That’s how my judicial career started.”
Shortly after came the spot as a county judge, then on to a district judge.
“I always tell myself, there are not a lot of opportunities in life, opportunities only come knocking every so often,” Kopcow said. “So you’ve just gotta go for it. Take advantage of them. And that’s what I’ve done my entire life.”
Community focus
With a docket of roughly 600 cases per year, Kopcow is bound to run into people he’s met in court while out and about.
Those interactions can vary greatly. He’s had his fair share of sad moments during which he can tell people haven’t taken advantage of the opportunities they’ve been afforded because they don’t want to change.
But there are also the random meetings that restore his faith in the system.
“My favorite part is when people come up to me on the street and say, ‘Thank you for giving me an opportunity to get my life back on track,’ ” Kopcow said. “Some people even say, ‘Thank you for putting me in prison. I needed that time out in life, and now I’m a new person. And if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here.’ So that warms my heart a lot of times.”
Of all the people whose cases he’s presided over, and all the people he’s ran into outside of the courtroom, there’s one he keeps coming back to: Clint Jewett.
Jewett dealt with alcohol problems for a lot of his life and was a frequent in Kopcow’s courtroom when he was a younger judge.
“I probably put Clint in jail a number of times,” Kopcow said.
Though jail never did the trick for Jewett, it was another place Kopcow sent him that finally got through to him. Jewett found a program at Harvest Farm, a 100-acre farm and rehabilitation center north of Wellington. Jewett believed that would actually work for him, and Kopcow was willing to give him that chance.
“He doesn’t look at all the bad of a person,” Jewett said. “He looks at what good can come out of you. … But he did say, ‘I just want you to understand that this is your last chance here. You screwed everything else up. I wish you well, but I just want you to know what happens if it doesn’t work out.’ ”
Judge Marcelo Kopcow talks about the American flags that were given to him by a fifth grade class during the first year of his career in Weld County. Kopkow will retire on July 31.(Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)Fifteen years later, it’s pretty safe to say it worked. Jewett now runs a landscaping company in Greeley and has been sober ever since.
Even just 13 months later — the duration of the program — Jewett was confident enough that the program worked that he invited Kopcow to come to his graduation ceremony.
“I pretty much demanded it,” Jewett said.
Kopcow obliged, even speaking at the ceremony. After that, the two stayed in touch, and eventually it was Jewett’s turn to return the favor.
Once Kopcow started as an adjunct professor at the University of Northern Colorado, he invited Jewett to come speak to his class — something Jewett took him up on multiple times.
“Clint is a reminder of why I do this job,” Kopcow said. “He gives me just as much as I give him when we have lunch together. I’m able to have a renewed faith and hope in rehabilitation.”
It’s tough for either to really pinpoint when their relationship turned from judge and defendant to that of friends. But there’s no doubt that the two have formed a special bond.
“It’s always used to be, ’Hello, Judge Kopcow.’ Then probably five to eight years ago, he started calling me Marcelo. Which was a big step because it really changed from ‘you’re my judge’ to ‘you’re my friend,’ ” Kopcow said.
The two still get lunch every month. They’ve gone to sporting events together. Jewett even went to Kopcow’s retirement party earlier this month.
“Clint just makes me feel so good because his sobriety is so important,” Kopcow said. “And he keeps thanking me, and I’m like, ‘Dude, I just provided you with the resource. This is all you.’ ”
While Jewett may serve as the shining example of Kopcow truly being a man of the people, it is far from the end of his community involvement.
“He didn’t just take the job and do the bare minimum,” said Weld District Judge Timothy Kerns, another friend of Kopcow’s. “He’s sort of the opposite of that. He takes the community aspect very seriously.”
Kopcow has done plenty through the years to fill his nights and weekends outside of the time-intensive research his docket requires.
He has served in too many positions to list — but some highlights include time as the state chair of the Sex Offender Management Board, president of the Kiwanis of the Rockies, vice chair of the Weld County Community Corrections Board, as well as roles in the Statewide Probations Advisory Committee, the Colorado Bar Association, the Weld County Bar Association and the Weld County Community Corrections Board.
He also was an adjunct professor at the UNC from 2014 until last year and started National Adoption Day up again in 2010 — overseeing 22 adoptions that day and dozens, if not hundreds, since.
“I don’t want to just be the judge that comes in at 8 and leaves at 5,” Kopcow said. “This is my world. I need to know what’s going on outside in the community. So surrounding myself with non-lawyers, being part of church and service groups, that kind of gives me perspective of what’s going on.”
His dedication to the community isn’t just evident to those paying attention. It’s evident to anyone who’s walked into his courtroom. On the wall just right of where Kopcow sat for the past six years were more than a dozen paper flags given to him years ago from a local elementary school class.
“I just embraced the community,” he said. “It’s my community. I have my wife here. My two kids went to school here, and I just wanted to move the needle just a little bit to make this place, Weld County, just a little bit better to live in, right?”
What’s next?
For someone who’s been as busy as Kopcow has been over the entirety of his career, there’s no way he can stop cold turkey. But he knew he needed to slow down.
“It’s really hard to keep up the pace of doing 600-plus cases a year,” Kopcow said. “It’s a lot. It’s intense, it’s long hours, it’s sleepless nights. It’s a huge undertaking. And I embraced and loved every minute of it, but I recognize I can’t keep up the pace.”
And since he made the decision to get into law, he really hasn’t known anything else.
“I’m never giving up my license,” Kopcow said. “I’m going to be a lawyer until the day I die. But maybe in a different capacity, slowing down just a little bit.”
Judge Marcelo Kopcow has served more that 20 years in the 19th Judicial Division and will retire on Aug. 1, 2025. Prior to being named a district court judge, he spent just over a year each as a Weld County Court judge and a Greeley Municipal Court judge. (Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)He’s already slated to oversee bond hearings every other weekend at the Weld County Jail, and he hopes to serve as a senior judge — filling in for other judges across the state when they are either out sick or on vacation.
“That sounds like a really good way of going from fifth gear to third gear,” Kopcow said. “Kind of slowing down, but still keeping my mind active.”
Outside of law, he hopes to pick up a new skill or two. Something nearing the other end of the spectrum from what has kept him busy for the past three decades.
“I’d love to take a class on like cooking or woodworking. Maybe something with auto mechanics,” Kopcow said. “Whatever it is, something completely different.”
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