Judge John Sutter was born in San Francisco, California in 1928, and grew up across the Bay in Oakland. The outdoors played a role in his early life, and in this interview he shares his childhood memories of going out to Oakland's shoreline to fly model airplanes. He became active in conservation advocacy and park development in the late 1950s–1960s that included a recommendation in 1967 to the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) on the conversion of the Oakland Army Air Base at the foot of the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge into a gateway park for the city of Oakland. He never stopped fighting for a park there, and over fifty years later, his vision came to pass when the Judge John Sutter Regional Shoreline (JJSRS) opened to the public in 2020. In 1958 he joined the Save San Pablo Dam campaign committee and became a co-founder of Citizens for Regional Recreation and Parks; later called People for Open Space, and which is now the Greenbelt Alliance. In 1961 he organized a successful campaign to save Snow Museum Site, a city park on Oakland's Lake Merritt that was proposed to become commercial development; he later led another campaign that saved Lake Merritt from a large parking garage development at Bellevue and Grand Avenues. He also worked on Oakland Measure DD to secure funding for the San Francisco Bay Trail and participated in saving the Ninth Ave. Terminal with the Oakland Heritage Alliance. Judge Sutter passed away in 2021, just months after this interview was conducted and the naming of JJSRS, at the age of 92 after a long and distinguished career in public service, including as an East Bay Regional Park District Board Member (1996–2016), Oakland City Council Member (1971–1982), and Alameda County Superior Court Judge (beginning in 1982). He also served on many boards including the Sierra Club, YMCA, Oakland Citizens Committee for Urban Renewal (OCCUR), Oakland Shoreline Committee, Oakland Arts Council and Oakland Cultural Affairs Commission. His many awards and honors include the "Making Democracy Work" award from the League of Women Voters. In this interview, Judge Sutter discusses his early life, interest in preserving open space, involvement with the East Bay Regional Park District, experience securing the land for Judge John Sutter Regional Shoreline, and his involvement with various environmental projects.