Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor aid Tuesday that being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes more than 57 years ago helped inspire her to write her new children's book, "Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You."
"Don't presume the worst in people who do different things," the justice told ABC "Good Morning America" host George Stephanopoulos. "Just ask."
She recalled an instance where someone mistook her as a drug addict, and how it made her feel.
"One day I'm in a restaurant and I'm in the bathroom giving myself an injection and this woman walks in and sees me finishing up and putting my injection away and I walk out and at the end of our meal, I get up to walk past her and I overhear her say to her companion, 'she's a drug addict,'" Sotomayor said.
"I stopped and I was embarrassed and I turned around and I walked back to the woman and said, 'I'm not a drug addict, I'm a diabetic. And you saw me taking insulin which is a drug that saves my life.'"
Sotomayor, 65, said her book discusses challenges such as illnesses and disabilities faced by children and called it a work that she's been thinking about for more than 30 years.
Sotomayor is the first Hispanic person appointed to the federal bench in New York and the third female justice. After recently celebrating her 10th anniversary on the court, she said told children sitting in on the GMA segment that there is often no "really right or wrong answer," which is difficult.
Sotomayor also revealed she had different goals as a child.
"When I was young I wanted to be a detective, like Nancy Drew," she said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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