The L.A. Judge Who Runs with Skid Row Every Week

Three mornings a week, before taking his seat on the bench at a Los Angeles Superior Court, Judge Craig Mitchell runs through Skid Row — the roughly 50-block stretch of downtown L.A. that is home to one of the largest concentrations of homeless people in the United States.

It started with a chance encounter 15 years ago. A man Mitchell had once sentenced to prison returned to his courtroom after being paroled to the Midnight Mission, a recovery organization in the area. He asked the judge to come down and meet the people helping him rebuild his life. Mitchell did. And when the Mission's President asked if he could contribute to their recovery program, he thought of the one thing he knew had sustained his own mental and physical health: running.

That first outing had two participants. Over the following 15 years, the running club has reached countless thousands of people working through addiction, homelessness, and the long road back from incarceration.

For Mitchell, the experience has reshaped how he understands the people who appear before him. "Every human being has an incredibly complex back story," he said. "Everybody on Skid Row at some point was held in their mother's arms, and that mother and father had aspirations for this child, and something went wrong." That perspective now travels with him from the pavement to the courtroom. When a probation report reflects addiction, he pushes attorneys to secure viable recovery programs as a condition of leniency — because, as he put it, that is what the person actually needs.

Those who have run alongside him describe the club as more than exercise. One participant called Mitchell a trailblazer — someone who represents sobriety, second chances, and the simple act of believing in people. "We're running to our destination," he said, "which is recovery and success and helping one another."

Mitchell holds the title of Superior Court Judge, but the role he plays on those early morning streets is something harder to define — and, by his own account, something that has made him better at both.