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  "description": "\"I've done over 100 jury trials, which, again, is not that common. I did 12 life cases in one year, which is why the California State named me Prosecutor of the year.\"",
  "path": "/judicial-candidate-michelle-paradises-interview-transcript/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-26T17:37:08.000Z",
  "site": "https://ielaw.news",
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  "textContent": "The Inland Empire has only one judicial race in the upcoming June 2 election. Three candidates are vying for election to a single seat in Riverside County.\n\nMichelle Paradise joined the bar in 1997, and spent 25 years as a prosecutor, bringing over 100 cases to jury verdict, with a specialty in child abuse and homicides. She was promoted to Chief Deputy District Attorney, and placed in charge of the Major Crimes and Special Prosecution Units, in 2015. Paradise was promoted to Assistant District Attorney, overseeing the Indio and Blythe offices, in 2016. She was transferred to run the downtown office in 2019. County Executive Officer Jeff Van Wagenen invited her to join Riverside County Executive Office in 2023, as the Assistant Chief Executive Officer for Public Safety. She oversees the District Attorney’s Office, Public Defender’s Office, Sheriff’s Office, Office of Emergency Management, Riverside County Fire and Probation Departments. She also works in collaboration with Riverside Superior Court, to provide indigent defense contracts and funding resources. She is a mother of four and a grandmother to three.\n\nAdditional reporting on the election can be found at the election guide. The transcript of the interview with Andrea Garcia can be found here, and with Jennifer Loflin here. These conversations are lightly edited.\n\n**Q: So, when we were talking earlier, you brought up your experience before you joined the bar, in emergency dispatch. Can you tell us a bit about that?**\n\n**Paradise** : So when I was 21, just barely 21, I had been working a couple of odd jobs, but I came across this advertisement for an emergency 911 Dispatcher at the Riverside City Police and Fire Department, and I thought, What the heck? You know, I'll apply, I need a full-time job. I was working three part-time jobs at the time, so I took the test. I passed. A very difficult job to get into, and it's a difficult job to stay in. It's about a two-year training program to become a 911 emergency dispatcher, because, specifically with Riverside, you're handling police, fire, and ambulance calls, and you're on the channel. And so in the 80s, when I was doing this, Riverside had a real big gang problem, so it was extremely busy. And I did that. I was a dispatcher for eight years, almost nine years, until I was 29, then I went on to law school, but it was probably all my 20s I spent answering emergencies and responding to emergencies. and for someone in their 20s to spend their whole life making life and death decisions and guiding people during the worst moments of their lives.\n\nThere's no better training ground to prepare you for what's coming next in life. You have to listen. You have to always listen and be able to ask the right questions, because this is the worst moment of their lives, and they don't know what they're doing, and they don't know what to do next.\n\nSo you listen carefully, gather the facts, ask the right questions, diagnose the problem, and get them the help. And that really shaped who I was going to be, and who I was then.\n\nThis was one of the best jobs I could have asked for, and helped me shape my future and what I was going to face later on in life, when helping people in the worst moments of their lives. I was so happy that I had that experience.\n\nYou have to be really in the moment. You have to be present. You have to know all the details, and you have to have all the code memorized, , And, you had to know the city like the back of your hand. You had to know all the penal code sections. Which gave me an advantage when I went on to be a criminal lawyer. No one could figure out how I knew all the penal code sections already. I had eight years of learning it.\n\nSo, yes, it was an advantage in so many ways to have that job.\n\n**Q: And did that influence you to become a prosecutor?**\n\n**Paradise** : Influence me? No, no, I always knew I was going to be a prosecutor. It was the means. Look, it introduced me to public service and public safety, which gave me personal gratification. Gratification fed my soul. No I knew all that before, so I used working at the police and fire department as an opportunity to get me through school. I didn't have family support. I didn't have financial support. In fact, I was raising my sister at the same time, who's nine years younger than me, and she's actually here, over there. So I needed a job that I could support both of us, and that would afford me the ability to go to school. And so I started slowly, went to RCC, got my associate's degree, and debated across the nation, and that was to hone my communication skills, because I knew I was going to be a trial attorney. Did it influence me, no, but it certainly helped me get to where I needed to go. And then I got my degree, like I said, my associates at RCC went on to University of San Diego and commuted. I worked graveyard shifts, swing shifts at the police department, and then commuted every Tuesday and Thursday to San Diego to go to school full time at University of San Diego. I graduated there, and then went on to law school.\n\n**Q: So when did you know you wanted to be a prosecutor?**\n\n**Paradise:** So it's hard to say because I was so young, but I do know that at a young age, I decided that. I'm not going to go into it, but I'll share that I came from an abusive childhood, traumatic childhood, and so for me, I knew that if I made it through, that my life was going to be with purpose. And so that purpose for me was helping others. Helping other, vulnerable people that didn't have a voice of their own. And so I always knew that part. I just didn't know what shape and form it was going to take. And as I became older and realized, Okay, here's this opportunity being a trial attorney and going to court and fighting for victims and holding those that are guilty accountable. That looks like fun, that looks like that will just be who I am, and it was exactly what fit me, and who I was going to be. And so I don't know, I can't tell you exactly when it happened, but I was young. It was certainly before I turned 18.\n\nWell, you had to have a lot of drive to be doing night shifts, commuting, all that and going on to law school. So did you consider any other legal career or was it always, “I'm going to protect victims.”\n\nI never considered any other legal career. I did during law school. I did introduce myself to other options, mostly to get a better understanding of the justice system. So I did work for the public defender's office in San Diego when I was in law school, for a year, and then I did an internship with the appellate Defender's Office writing appeals for those that have been convicted. So I introduced myself to that side, but I always knew I was going to be a prosecutor, and I enjoyed that work, and I admired that work, and it's necessary in the justice system, but my purpose was to protect victims. and that I was always going to be a prosecutor.\n\nSo in 1997, well, actually, I think it was 96 in my third year of law school, I applied at the DAs office in Riverside County. At that time, Grover Trask was the DA, and he had a wonderful reputation. Riverside had a much better reputation than San Diego at the time. So I applied, and thankfully, I passed the bar for the first time, and Grover Trask hired me before I even graduated law school. So I was lucky, and I'm grateful.\n\n**Q: That's great. And then what were your first assignments in the DAs office?**\n\n**Paradise:** So I did move up quickly, in part because I told you I debated in college, and I was successful, and then in law school, I was on the mock trial team, so I had a lot of practice, and it allowed me to move up very quickly in the DA 's office. So I only did eight misdemeanors, and that's unheard of, and I quickly went on to major sexual assaults with child abuse victims. So my very first stint, I did juvenile law for a year. And then I became very well versed in juvenile law. I did that again several years later as a felony attorney. I did that for a year, then I went on to preliminary hearings, and I did that for like six months, and that's where you're doing major felony cases also. And then I. Went on to doing sexual assault cases. So I was successful quickly, and they recognized it, and moved me up the ladder quickly.\n\n**Q: And just like you knew you wanted to be a prosecutor, did you know that you wanted to handle child abuse and homicide cases?**\n\n**Paradise:** Oh, 100% what drove me into that, into this job to be a prosecutor, was to represent children, and I found a niche for it. Ultimately, I became an expert in child abuse homicides, specifically medically complex homicides with abusive head trauma. I like medicine. It's really intriguing to me. I'm one of those geeks that will go to an autopsy and get right in there and learn all about the body and, yeah, anything that is an opportunity to learn something that will make me a better trial attorney, I'm going to take advantage of it.\n\n**Q: And what cases were you most proud of handling in the office? And you don't have to go into details,but you can just talk about why you're the most proud of them. What have you achieved?**\n\n**Paradise:** Well, you mentioned it in the beginning. I've done over 100 jury trials, which, again, is not that common. I did 12 life cases in one year, which is why the California State named me Prosecutor of the year. So to pick one, I probably have touched 1000s, but to pick child abuse cases were probably the most significant to me.\n\nIt recently came up in a civil litigation. But there was one where a foster father, who is also a teacher, his last name is West, and he molested teenage boys since the 1980s and unfortunately, the system failed. The whole system failed. Children kept being returned to the same perpetrator who was sexually assaulting the boys. And every time it came through the system, it gets rejected and rejected. Well, it came to me in 2002, maybe earlier mid 2000s and I saw it, and I decided, ‘No, not this many.’\n\nWe're talking 15 to 20 young men who are reporting that this guy has sexually assaulted them. So I took it and the statute of limitations had expired for most of them, but I was able to, I want to save three victims, and then use the others in what we call 1108, as prior victims as evidence of his modus operandi. And so I prosecuted that, and I'll tell you why. I will always remember it when we sat there listening to the verdicts come out. One of the victims was sitting behind me, and we heard the first guilty. And I looked over, and I looked at him, and his eyes met mine, and they welled up. I mean, in all these, these weren't boys anymore. They were men, and he was so grateful and so appreciative that I will never, ever forget that young man's face and the hug that followed. So that one probably gave me the greatest satisfaction, even though I could tell you so many stories just like that, but I would be remiss. I know you asked me for one, but I cannot, I cannot forget probably one of the most important ones to the community, to Riverside County, and that is in 2018.\n\nI prosecuted John Felix Hernandez, and he murdered two Palm Springs police officers, Gilbert Vega and Leslie Zerebny. And Gil had a month before he was going to retire from Palm Springs police department, he literally had gone to PERS (California Public Employees' Retirement System) and got his papers. And then Leslie had just given birth, and she had a little girl who I still keep in touch with. She had just come back from maternity leave, and they went to a domestic disturbance between the parents and the adult son.\n\nMr. Hernandez, is on the inside of the house, and starts shooting, unprovoked, at Gil and Leslie. And he shoots them, and ultimately they fall to the ground, and they're slowly dying. Backups coming. While they're trying to rescue their fellow officers, this suspect continues to shoot so he's trying to kill about six others.\n\nJust listening to the officers testify about trying to recover the bodies of their fellow officers was heartbreaking. I don't think there was a person in that courtroom that wasn't crying at different points of that trial. So I handled that case. I prosecuted that case, two jury verdicts, and it's the only time I have ever experienced where all the jurors stayed in the courtroom and met with the family and hugged them, and there was even a party afterwards between the jurors and the family. It was just out of love, and gratitude. There was just so much community support behind that case, and probably I will never, ever see that again, or experience that again. So I would be remiss if I didn't share that.\n\n**Q: While a prosecutor, and bringing cases to trial, who were some of your mentors and what was the biggest advice that they gave you?**\n\n**Paradise:** So when I joined the office, it was kind of different in the sense of, we didn't have a mentorship program. It's funny, but when I first remember how I told you, juvenile (court)? was where I first started. So, you know, there's a reason for everything but Jeff Van Wagonen, our current county executive officer, was my partner, and so we were in the same pit. He and I, and a ping pong table were in juvenile law, I will say that he taught me a lot. He's very organized. He taught me a lot there, in the beginning, like how to prepare your trials. But mentors, I would say it didn't come till later on, because I was older, so I wasn't like one of these young kids that just came out of college and went on to law school. I was 31 when I graduated law school, so I was kind of on my own, but Mike Sokio, Eileen Hunt, those two were probably my biggest mentors. Both have moved on and retired since, but Mike Sokio, an incredible, incredible trial attorney. I would go and watch him, and I stole so much of his verbiage and his closing arguments.\n\nYou know, every case is different, so you can't steal a whole bunch, but you can steal nuggets. And I would weave those into my arguments, and then Eileen Hunt, she was the expert. I'm going to say, still, is an expert of abuse and head trauma cases, and so there were only a couple of us that would do them in the office. Most people didn't want to touch them because they're hard to understand. And Eileen, she always believed in me, and she was great about telling me who to talk to, and what medical experts to talk to. I spent a lot of time at hospitals, so I will say, as far as mentors, a lot of doctors. I have spoken to so many pathologists for the autopsies. Doctor Joe Cohen was the best. I mean, he would let me get in there, and he would literally, and I don't want to get ugly or gross with describing anything, but he would literally show me pieces of the body and how it worked and how neurological trauma can be seen in different parts of the body, and specifically the spine and the brain stem and that kind of stuff. But those are the ones that are coming to my mind, doctors.\n\n**Q: What about judges? Which judge did you admire that you learned from as far as how to prosecute, well?**\n\n**Paradise:** Judges that I admire the most. I'm going to give you two. Richard Fields. Judge Fields, I did a few trials in front of him. Difficult trials, very difficult. And Michele Levine, she came from the district attorney's office, and she always had such an impeccable reputation, and she did on the bench too. In fact, I think she's the only judge that ever went through the review of judicial candidates, for judicial nomination. It's a whole group of people, and they solicit surveys from the legal community.\n\nShe, I believe, if I heard this correctly, is the only one that never had a single negative survey or opinion about her, and so and if I had to guess, Judge Fields, it would probably be the same. They both have the same characteristics, both of them, incredibly intelligent, and have a legal acumen that is above all others. tIf they don’t know, they're going to say they don't know and that they will find out, and you can trust that they will do the research, and that whatever they come back with is going to be legally sound. So both of them are highly respected in that regard, but not just that, because that's what we want in a judge, right? Someone who's going to know the law and apply it fairly and equally, but also who has a good demeanor, who's going to treat everybody with respect? And never once didI see either one of those judges treat anyone with anything but respect. It doesn’t matter who. It could be a staff member, it could be a deputy, it could be a prosecutor, a defense attorney, a defendant. It did not matter. They were always treated with respect. And those are the attributes that I would want to have as well, that I intend to have as well, but they both are just wonderful judges.\n\n**Q: How long were you handling cases before bringing them to trial as a line prosecutor? How long was that?**\n\n**Paradise:** Well, I didn't stop when I became a chief and an assistant district attorney. That was one of my deal breakers. I worked hard to be a trial attorney. I wasn't giving that up just because I was going into executive leadership. So I didn't stop. So I don't know if that answers your question.\n\n**Q: So there were many cases that you tried. Was that a record?**\n\n**Paradise:** Probably during the timeframe. I don't you know if someone's been there longer, and I mean, I can't say, you know, it's funny, but people can say ‘I handled 100 cases.’\n\nWell, that doesn't mean you prosecuted them all the way to jury trial. You didn't take them to court, you didn't pick jurors but I literally did over 100 jury trials. I also did several bench trials, which means no jury, but it's still a trial, and you're appealing to a judge. I also did civil trials. So I did probably about a dozen civil trials, which were the sexually violent predators that you are committing to a mental hospital. The one percent that are the worst of the worst, and so that group of people, if they are still deemed to be dangerous to the public, then it was my responsibility to have them civilly committed to a state hospital until they were no longer dangerous to the public. So those are civil trials, civil commitments. So I also did those.\n\n**Q: So how many cases were you handling while being assistant deputy district attorney?**\n\n**Paradise** : Well, it depended on how many I took as a trial, but I didn't carry a caseload, so it's not the same as a line deputy DA, because I was doing executive work. But I would take cases and I will tell you that the ones that I took were ones that other people didn't want. I didn't cherry pick cases. If it was a difficult case, it was usually what I took. There's no fun in doing the easy ones.\n\n**Q: So you worked your way to being chief deputy district attorney in charge of major crimes and domestic prosecution units. For the people that aren't familiar with the office, can you describe what that means?**\n\n**Paradise** : What does that mean? Well, yes, I did work my way up there, but I never wanted it. I wasn't looking to go into management. I was more than happy doing the trials. So as a line deputy DA, you can have many different kinds of assignments, mine was always trials. So it was the Child Abuse Unit, and then the homicide unit, and that's where I was until Mike Hestrin won the election in 2015. Prior to that, I had said no to management. I had been asked early on to be honest with you, but I was, ‘No, no, no, no, no, I'm not done learning.’ And so Mike asked me to go into management, and I did skip some levels, and I immediately went into chief. And so there, sometimes they still take trials. Sometimes they don't. It's probably rare that you continue to do trials once you go into management. But that was one of the terms that I discussed with Mike, was that I still wanted to do trials, and he was good, but he did remind me, you'll also have this other job, so don't overdo it. So I became chief quickly, within a year, that's when he asked me to take over as an assistant DA and run the NDO office. He specifically wanted me to go out to Indio and run that office for three years. So I always had a couple of cases, all homicides, and then did my other job.\n\n**Q: Are you willing to share the reasons why he chose you?**\n\nOkay, I've known Mike my entire career. I think there was just a year between us. We went the same path. So as I'm in the child abuse unit, Mike was too. Mike came in shortly after me, but, but we did the same thing. We went into the homicide unit together, so we knew each other. We knew each other's work, and Mike also knew that I wasn't someone that just went with the program. If there was a difference of opinion or I didn't agree with something, I'm not afraid to look at where it came from. There's nothing someone's going to do to me now that I can't take, so I was never afraid to speak up. I was never afraid to stand up for whatever I thought was right. He appreciated that. That's what he wanted. He wanted a voice that wasn't going to be Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You know. He wanted someone that was going to contribute and tell him the truth, and who could lead the office, not just with leadership, but with the legal knowledge that's going to help make the right decisions when evaluating cases.Sometimes cases don't get filed, whether it's because there's insufficient evidence, or whether it's because you're not so sure that person's guilty, you don't prosecute those, and he trusted my judgment in those and when he asked me, it didn't take me long to say yes. I had that kind of respect for him. So there is a mutual respect, and I trusted that he was going to run that office with nothing less than integrity and moral ethics. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but we trusted each other.\n\n**Q: And in those roles, what were some of the initiatives or changes that you're the most proud of at the District Attorney's Office?**\n\n**Paradise:** Well, in a supervisorial role?\n\n**Q: Yes.**\n\n**Paradise:** Well, I don't want to give too much inside baseball information here, but at the district attorney's office, there were a lot of changes that we made. But specifically I was asked to go to the Indio branch to make sure that there was consistency. We all believed that the law should be applied equally, no matter where you live, in Riverside County, and so the east and the west and the southwest that all needed to be consistent. And prior to that, there were a lot of silos. This was an opportunity to put everyone on the same page. And not that we had to do everything the same, because every region has its unique features, right? But you want to be able to review cases equally. You want to be able to have the same filing standards. You don't want someone to be treated differently because they live in the east versus the west. That's not right. So we went there to all work together. Let's get out of our silos, and we successfully did that so that now Riverside County is operating equally and consistently amongst all the different regions.\n\n**Q: And when you were brought in to handle the downtown office following your time in Indio , how many people were you supposed to supervise in that office?**\n\n**Paradise** : That's a good question. I'm sure it's a lot. I don't think it's around 300. I'm guessing, but it's a lot.\n\n**Q: I think people don't understand the size of the DA’s office, because it is a massive organization, and it's a big role to supervise people, especially in the downtown office. So it came with a lot of challenges. How would you describe the transition to downtown?**\n\n**Paradise:** Well, I grew up downtown, so it wasn't much of a transition. I started out as a chief downtown. I'm running the major crimes units and the special prosecution unit. At the time they were combined, plus I knew everyone, because I had been there since 1997. Indio is where I knew nobody. I didn't know any of the judges. I didn't know any of the defense attorneys or even prosecutors, even though it's a large DAs office, and everything was siloed, so it was really the Indio office that I had to make the transition. But it was good, because at first I was like, Oh my gosh, I don't want to drive two hours to work and two hours coming home. I had two small children at the time, and it's like, that's a lot, but it was for a good reason, so we made it work. And what I did was I met with every single person in that Indio office. I had a calendar created so that I spent time with every single employee and they came to my office, and there was no agenda there. I didn't have an agenda. Every person's got their own issues, their own things they want to talk to me about, and so I got to know everybody, and I took the time, and they appreciated that, and I listened. You gotta listen. I wasn't there to talk. I was there to listen and see what needed to be fixed. I needed to learn, what can I do to help you, and then figure out a way to help them, get them the resources they need. So I did that, and then I moved beyond that, and met with judges and kind of sat back and took it all in first, kind of like what I was talking about before, gathering the facts. Listen, gather the facts, and then figure out a way to make a better office, make it a better place. And I will say that the office is a shining star now. They outdo all the other regions. Yeah, they have a lot to be proud of.\n\n**Q: So how did you go from being a prosecutor and still managing these prosecutions to leaving the office and joining the county executive office.**\n\n**Paradise:** Do you mean the caseloads I had?\n\n**Q: Oh, I mean when, when you left to join the county office? How did that transition happen? Why did you choose to leave the office and stop doing prosecutions?**\n\n**Paradise:** So there were a few reasons, but one was that the particular job that I was offered at the executive office had been empty for two years, and so there was a strong need. And Jeff Van Wagenen and, I don't want to speak for him, but he was looking for someone to take that position because he was filling it, and then the chief, Juan Perez was also filling that job, so they were doing the job of many people. I looked at it as an opportunity to learn beyond just the district attorney's office, and I didn't realize how significant it would be until after I actually left and went to the executive office, because now I get to learn about the entire justice system. I mean, I knew a lot of what goes on in the different offices. I made friends on all sides and with judges, but this gave me an opportunity to actually understand the working relationships and the parts of the system that work together: the sheriff’s office, probation office, the public defender's office, indigent defense panels, and the courts, including emergency fire, emergency management and then the fire department. My world opened up, and it gave me a different perspective than I could have ever asked for, and has prepared me for this next step, to be a judge in ways no one else can even come close to. This was a perfect transition, actually. So I'm very grateful that I had this opportunity. In spite of being able to tell you that being a prosecutor with the Riverside DAs office is the best job ever. It really is. It was, it still is, but I needed to keep learning.\n\nSo you are coming into a job that hasn't been filled for two years, I'm guessing there's a backlog. There's a lot of stuff you had to do as soon as you stepped in.\n\n**Paradise:** I don't want to say there was a backlog, because I do believe that the CEO and the Chief Operating Officer, both Van Wagenen and Perez were very effective, but they also had their other jobs. They had their other full time jobs to do. So I can't say there's a backlog. Everything gets done. You know, it's just, do you sleep? And I didn't know exactly what this job was going to be. When I took it, I was afraid I was actually going to be bored, because I'm used to, you know, a lot of chaos and a lot of immediate decision making. And I quickly learned this job is not going to be boring. Every hour was going to be a different subject matter. Every day was going to be a different project, a different initiative. It it was a bit overwhelming, to be honest\n\nAnd a big transition because just of the size of the county, the size of all these different departments that you're leading.\n\n**Q: So for the people who aren't too familiar with the role, is it just providing funding or how would you describe it?**\n\n**Paradise:** Well, first of all, I think Jeff would tell you this too, I'm no budget genius. I'm not a financial wizard. I don't believe that's why I was brought over. Okay, I've learned a lot, and it's because I have great people around me that are financial wizards. I have great analysts on my team and a great budget team, so they help guide me on doing that. Do we have a big budget? Public Safety has a $2.3 billion budget that's huge, and I do play a role in that, in deciding and helping the departments figure out how much they need in order to run that fiscal year, and then how much can the county give. And that's just a very small part of my job, though. It's really a small part, because, you know, I spent half of my day today working on a civil case, a civil lawsuit, and figuring out attorney representation and whether or not the county can be represented in this case, and whether or not there's a conflict of interest.\n\nAnd so every day is different, and the budget is huge, because that's what everybody cares about, but it's just a little part of what I do. And thank God I have people that are smarter than me that can help me get through that, because it is a big budget.\n\n**Q: So moving on from that, you've filed the candidacy for judge. When did you decide you wanted to be a judge?**\n\n**Paradise** : When, I don't know. You know, a lot of people have told me over the years, oh, you'll be a judge. I always knew you'd be a judge, and I would always respond, yeah, I don't think so. I want to be a trial attorney. You know, I like what I do, but over the years, it's kind of popped into my head and popped out, maybe because I think other people planted it there, but it was never a career move for me, it was not an opportunity. I wasn't looking for the next gig, but I started to realize that I had a lot to give.he judges that I admire and those that I respect the most, I can be, I can give that, I've done the work. And then in 2022 I almost did it. I actually pulled the papers. And then Mike Hestrin had an opponent come up against him, and I was very loyal—I still am loyal—I was loyal to Hestrin and wanted to help him get reelected, so I chose not to pursue it then. And then in 2024 another opportunity came up, and I almost did it then, but then I said no, I promised Jeff three years, and I'd only started in '23 so it wasn't right, so I didn't do it. Then I decided I was going to retire. I did my three years. I told Jeff, I'll get us through the budget this fiscal year, and then I'm going to retire at the end of June. The budget goes into effect in July. And then this opportunity came up for a judgeship, and some judges reached out, and said, you gotta do this. This is your time. And it did seem like a sign.I've been thinking about this back and forth for a few years. Now. I don't need to do this. My career is full. I feel full, but I still have more to give. And I was getting scared of retiring. I was like, my brain is not ready to rest. You know, I still got it. I still got some work to do, and some people to serve. My purpose isn't done. So when I learned that Judge Hopp, seat 10 is retiring, and decided to come back as a visiting judge, I spoke to some judges. Presiding Judge Jacqueline Jackson, said, 'Yes, and I endorse you. Please do it.' And then I spoke with Judge Hopp and he endorsed me. He's like, 'yes, you'd be great for this. I endorse you.' I started speaking to more judges. John Molloy, you know, all these judges, and pretty soon, before I knew it, I had most of the bench supporting me, and endorsing me, and this is only a partial list. This is just going to the website. I realized that not just the judges, but defense attorneys, all the defense panels, Virginia Blumenthal, Paul Grech, Pete Morreale, Pete Scalisi, all the big defense attorneys. had my back. Public Defender, Steve Harmon. He was my second call. I called him and said, 'Steve, if I do this, will you endorse me?'\n\n‘Yes.’\n\nI also noticed you got Jamil up here (on the wall of the Riverside Chambers of Commerce). Jamil Dada, he endorsed me, he’s a great civic leader. So I felt like, Okay, this isn't just me, thinking I can do the job, the community does from all sides, not just Republican, Democrat, partisan, nonpartisan. It is coming from everyone. And that made me feel okay. They trust me, so I know I can do it, but others also trust that I should do it and that I'm needed and wanted. And I will say that Judge Hopp wanted me to take his seat. It means the world to me. He is highly respected, and he is a wonderful judge, and the fact that he has chosen me as the one who he wants to take his seat is a big deal and I'm honored to have it.\n\n**Q: It's interesting to see that throughout your career, your advancements have been at the request of others, people saying you'd be great for this role, not you applying for them, but you're actually saying, I don't want to do that role. I want to do that. I'm going to be a prosecutor. I'm going to keep on handling cases. So yeah, and with someone like you, who's been so active in doing all these things, handling all those cases and trials, in the county executive office. I can see why it might be difficult to go straight into retirement after this. But either way, if you run or lose the election, you'll still be retiring from the county executive office.**\n\n**Paradise:** Yes, yes, I've been working for free. In fact, I think I pay the county now. I've been in this system since 1986 so at this point I'm losing money, and I have been for some time now. So I made a commitment. I love that I did this, but I can't keep losing money.\n\n**Q: What do you mean? You were working for free?**\n\n**Paradise** : So if I were to retire, I would make more money in retirement than I do working. And that's just because, you know how the system's been,\n\n**Q: Yeah, that's a long time.**\n\n**Paradise:** Whether I would stay retired, my husband would tell you, I know he would say, There's no way she was going to stay retired. It's just a matter of how long it was going to take her to find the next, because the mind still has to go. You know, I can do a lot of charity work, and I do charity work. I have my entire adult life and have been actively involved in charity work with the Soroptimist. I'll always do charity work, but I need to keep my mind active. And I love the law. So whatever the next chapter is going to be, it needed to be law related.\n\n**Q: You mentioned earlier, you have respect for Judge Fields and Judge Levine, are those the judges that you are moved to emulate?**\n\n**Paradise:** Yes.\n\n**Q: Moving on, yeah, that's easy. How would you describe your judicial philosophy?**\n\n**Paradise:** So judicial philosophy, first of all, is one of the things that kind of goes back to what I was saying before, though, is that you know the law, so you have the legal acumen, and you make sound decisions. And if you don't know, then you research it and you find out what the law is, and then you apply it fairly and equally. I do believe in judicial discretion, but I think it has to be measured with discipline. We do, because once judges start, I don't want to say abusing, but using too much judicial discretion the result can be unequal justice. It's unfairly or unequally dispersed. So, although I believe in judicial discretion, it does need to be disciplined so that it is equally applied and used. So legal acumen measures discipline with discretion and demeanor and that goes back to what I was saying about those two judges, is that they had the perfect demeanor, and I will treat everyone with respect. I will have every person's rights in mind and make sure they're protected. I don't care who it is. I don't care what crime was committed or alleged to have been committed, I will protect the rights of all persons, victims, suspects, it doesn't matter. So my philosophy is to be the smartest judge and work the hardest, because I promise you, I'm going to outwork everybody else to equally apply the law to the facts and to the person.\n\n**Q: What do you think sets you apart from the other candidates?**\n\n**Paradise:** So there is a judicial canon, canon five, that limits what judicial candidates can say about other candidates. So I need to be careful, so I'm not going to comment on them. I will share with you, I don't know either of them. I hadn't even heard of either of them, and I've been in this field since 1997 as a lawyer, and one of them even worked in my office at the same time I was there. I don't know them.\n\nBut I can tell you that I come with commitment. I come with a work ethic that few can beat. I come with the legal knowledge that few can beat. I come with trial skills that are honed and recognized. I am a recognized expert in trial and homicides and child abuse cases. I have done the work in trials. I have selected more than 100 juries for trial.\n\nI am supported by a remarkable amount of people that are as diverse as they come. I've got extreme left and I've got extreme right. It's all over the place, and I have to say that is because they've either worked with me, I've been in front of them, or I've worked against them as an adversary in court. It doesn't matter. They all respect me, and they trust me, and they know that I am going to play fairly and ethically, and that says a lot. I don't think you're going to find anyone, forget these other two candidates. You're not going to find anyone that has these kinds of endorsements across the board. And I'm proud of that. I'm proud of it. Because it means I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and that is equally and fairly applying the law to everyone.\n\nI will say that I will come with the leadership that few can say that they have accomplished before they became a judge. I've been an executive leader before taking this next step for several years now, I am someone that knows the justice system as a whole. Few can say that. I actually work with all the justices, not only do I work with them, I lead them. They're in my portfolio, all the justice partners, the entire system. I help make that work. And I know this isn't part of your question, but it's an example of how you can work with people, and different departments, with different interests. But if you look at it from the perspective of, how can we improve the justice system? And you've got all the partners, the stakeholders, at the table, how can we fix an inefficiency?\n\nAnd, so I became the Chair of JSCI, the Justice System Change Initiative, and the stakeholders are the public defender, the district attorney, the probation department, the sheriff's department and the courts.\n\nI chair it, and one of the very first initiatives I wanted to do, and the reason I share this is because this is an example of me understanding the system as a whole.\n\nWe have a backlog. We don't have enough judges. We got unnecessary delays with all these continuances, what can we do as a group to fix this, or help this? So we asked the courts, what's one of the biggest problems you're having, and it's continuances, right? A lot of defense attorneys, because of their own caseloads, didn't have time to necessarily go to the jails and see their clients in custody. So how can we make it easier for them to do that? We've been trying for years and years to get virtual jail meetings between defendants and their attorneys.\n\nIt was no, no, no, no. It was impossible for different reasons. During covid, we made it work for a minute, and then it was broken down right after covid. So when I came in, that was one of the first initiatives I wanted to fix. Let's figure out if we can do it. And because of relationships, because of understanding what each department needs and what resources they have, we made it work. So the Sheriff Department agreed to work with the public defender's office and with the court's blessing, to create this. So now, through technology, we've got virtual jail meetings, and the public doesn't generally know this. This just happened. We just finished our last jail, and I think it's a southwest jail where there is web communication between the defense attorneys and the public defender's office and the inmates and their clients, so they can visit their clients anytime, virtually. It's like FaceTime, and that is meant to reduce the continuances and reduce the delays of the court caseload. And so having that understanding of how the justice system works and how we can get all of our partners work together, that’s what I bring to the table.\n\n**Q: And when was that last jail equipped to do that?**\n\n**Paradise:** Within a month, a month ago. Yeah, well, it's recent.\n\n**Q: I need to write an article on that.**\n\n**Paradise:** Yes, you should. You should, because it's a huge initiative, and it's just incredible that we finally got it done. I mean, we've been talking about this for 10 years at least, and we got it done.\n\n**Q: Well, congratulations.**\n\n**Paradise:** Thank you. It took a lot of work from all the partners.\n\n**Q: That seems like it. I mean, the cooperation and also the security that you need to have to make this happen. I'm sure there was a major roadblock.**\n\n**Paradise:** Yes, well, not a roadblock. We worked through it.\n\n**Q: You worked through it. One of the questions that I had earlier was, I just forgot to ask you, is in everything that you handle and you have handled over the years, you saw a lot of trauma. How did you deal with that and manage to keep on pushing forward?**\n\n**Paradise:** You know, it's funny, I get asked that question a lot but because this is being recorded, there's only so much I want to share. I had a traumatic childhood. It was a really bad, traumatic childhood, and so I think you can come out of that in different ways, but I believe that your life is not decided by your past. It is decided by the choices you make in your life, how you live and what your purpose is. So my living through my childhood trauma gave me my purpose. It shaped what I was going to do. And I don't know, I can't tell you why I am the way I am, but I can compartmentalize, and I have a wonderful balance, like people think that I Oh, you're always on vacation. No, you think I'm always on vacation because I will make sure I am spending time with my family. I will be at every game. I will be at every dance recital. I will be there. I'm not sleeping, butI will be there.\n\nI've seen every kind of homicide you can imagine, because I was a homicide prosecutor and on call for over 10 years. I've seen hundreds of autopsies, I've spoken to 1000s of victims and children, and have helped hundreds of families get through the traumas that they've suffered f on a daily basis. But don't forget, I was also a 911 dispatcher, so I'm listening. I'm the first responder taking that 911 emergency, and there isn't a single call. I mean, think about it, eight, almost nine years at 10 hours a day minimum, sometimes up to 16. And every call is different, and traumatic. And so I think I just got wired. I got programmed to where it doesn't even feel like trauma anymore. I mean, you have to experience it. And I've always taught my children this too. Feel your emotions. Feel it, get through it. If you gotta close the door and cry your eyes out, do that. And I will, especially sometimes when it comes to children, the child prosecutions, I would close my door, look at all the pictures and the trauma that you could visually see on their bodies, and I would cry, but that's it. Now I'm done crying. Now I have a job to do, and so you have to operate like that and make sure you hug your kids, you know, hug them, because that's the beauty, that's the other side of this trauma. So you gotta balance it out, and pour your love into your kids, and I'm going to say this publicly because I'm not ashamed to say I believe in God. God has always been a part of my heart. I don't go around preaching, but I've been praying since I was a little girl, and I think having God by my side is what has helped me and will always guide me. So that's how I do it.\n\n**Q: The last question I was going to ask was, you mentioned that you were going to be retiring from the county executive office. How long do you think that you want to serve as a judge before retiring from that role if elected?**\n\n**Paradise:** So you may think I'm old, but I'm not that old.\n\n**Q: You said you wanted to retire.That wasn't me. (laughs)**\n\n**Paradise:** I wanted to retire, in part because I'm losing money, right, but I still want to work. I wanted to retire from that job and start a next chapter. I promise that I will not give less than six years, because that would not be right. Each term is six years. And so once I am sitting in that seat, which I'm telling you, I will be. Once I am sitting there, it will be for a solid six years, minimum. Who knows? I mean, I could want to do this until I'm 90. Now, that would be silly, but at maybe 80, yeah, so right now I'm almost 60, so I could see that.\n\n**Q: Well, thank you for taking the time to help people learn about you. I appreciate this conversation.**",
  "title": "Judicial candidate Michelle Paradise's interview transcript",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-27T23:13:01.101Z"
}