How it Started

The Villalobos brothers, Aaron and Ruben, are the sons of a Panamanian immigrant, Rolando Villalobos and Marianne Villalobos. Their parents met at Modesto Junior College (MJC) where Marianne was a Spanish major and Rolando was an international student. Rolando spent his career in real estate, and Marianne is a Spanish teacher at Modesto High School. The brothers have an older sister, Kelly, who is a teacher in Turlock, and a niece, Sabina, who is a sophomore in the Modesto High International Baccalaureate program. Ruben and Aaron hold both U.S and Panamanian passports, and both have driven from Modesto to their ancestral hometown in Panama.

Aaron was born in Modesto and graduated from Modesto High School where he enjoyed playing sports including soccer and wrestling. He did his undergraduate work at UC Santa Cruz, starting as a political science major, but graduated with a computer engineering degree. His senior year at UCSC he was recruited by Xerox to join their team at their Los Angeles location where he excelled. Due to the burst of the technology bubble, Aaron was forced to choose between relocating to upstate New York or re-thinking his career. After a chat with his parents and brother, he decided to go to law school at Whittier School of Law. He excelled at his core classes which allowed him leeway to take his elective classes in Cairo, Egypt, studying, among other things, Islamic Jurisprudence and International Criminal Law. Being a self-starter, he created an individual study program and passed the California bar exam the first time.

After Law School, Aaron returned to the Bay Area and used both his computer and legal background working for Lexis, as he taught law students how to use legal databases. During this time, he was also an essential part of assisting his favorite baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, to achieve two World Series rings.

Around this time, he was diagnosed with a tumor on his pituitary gland. With a lot of support from his family and the doctors at UCSF medical center, the tumor along with the gland was removed. This event served as a turning point, bringing Aaron back to Modesto for rehab and eventually to partner with his brother in the Villalobos Legal Group.