As a line deputy arguing a motion in a 1993 murder case, Jeff Adachi was cut short by Superior Court Judge Richard Haugner. "Do you have something to add to those papers which isn't in there, some brilliant case you found somewhere in the upper Tokyo reports?" Haugner asked. Adachi did not let the remark slide. He immediately challenged it as offensive, and soon after he and the San Francisco public defender's office were encouraging the local bar association to investigate. A year later, the Commission on Judicial Performance publicly reproved Haugner, saying the remark was "suggestive of racial or ethnic bias." It wasn't the first time and certainly not the last Adachi took a stand against powerful interests, whether for himself, his staff, his clients or the people of San Francisco. Adachi served 16 years in the office's top job before dying of an apparent heart attack Friday at age 59. "He was one of the most compassionate, fierce, fearless, dedicated agents for social change this city has ever seen," Deputy Public Defender Niki Solis said in a written statement. "He broke the mold, not making decisions based on political expediency, but on simply what was right. There is no replacing a man of his magnitude but, he of all people, would be the first to say, 'keep fighting on!'" As scrappy as he was sunny, Adachi was born for San Francisco's quirky role of elected public defender. Under predecessor Jeff Brown, Adachi rose quickly through the ranks to become the office's chief assistant and was long expected to succeed Brown in the role. But when Brown retired in 2001, then-Mayor Willie Brown appointed his friend Philip Burton's daugher, Kimiko Burton-Cruz, to the position. Burton-Cruz fired Adachi her first day on the job. Once again, Adachi girded for a fight. Burton-Cruz had the advantage of incumbency and some $1.2 million in backing from the Brown-Burton machine. Adachi raised less than a quarter of that. But he won the election, 55 to 45 percent. Asked what message he had for Burton-Cruz afterward, Adachi was gracious. "I'm going to try to continue the positive things she put in place in the office," he told The Recorder just before taking the job. "There are a lot of great lawyers that she hired. There's a DNA program that now is in place. She made positive strides toward reducing the number of young people who were kept in custody at the Youth Guidance Center. ... The idea is not to go in there to change things just to change things." It was vintage Adachi: Fight like hell, offer plenty of carrots along with sticks and know when to move on. "There's one way you have to be in the courtroom [where] all bets are off and you have to go for it," he said in the same interview. "When you're doing things on a policy level, you have to work collaboratively." With the city facing a budget crisis in February 2009, Adachi began by asking for a $1.7 million increase for his office and warned that he would be forced to drop cases if it two new paralegal positions weren't funded. That caused budget analyst Harvey Rose to chew out Adachi at a public hearing and a supervisor to demand an audit of the PD's finances. Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed $753,000 in cuts. "I thought the Bush-Cheney era was over," Adachi groused afterward. But by June, Adachi had persuaded the auditor that the public defender actually saved the city money, and supervisors voted to restore most of the $753,000. Adachi went back before the board to accept the compromise, "hopefully with the stipulation that I will be considered a team player." Even Rose smiled.

Adachi achieved a lot during his 16 years as PD, according to Deputy Public Defender Tal Klement. He created social service networks for underprivileged youth, stocking the office with a team of social workers and support staff for clients. He created a clean slate program to expunge clients' old convictions that became a national model. He launched a bail unit that interviewed clients and their families as soon as they were arrested rather than days later. And he hired top immigration lawyers to fight deportations. "He was the most inspiring (and demanding) person I have ever encountered—motivated by his steadfast pursuit of justice for our clients and fueled by his indefatigable spirit," Klement said. "Nothing on this earth could stop him when he believed in his cause."

Along with the big structural changes came important symbolic gestures. When John Tennison's murder conviction was vacated in 2004 after he'd spent 13 years in prison, Adachi hired him to work on the PD's front desk, answering phones and helping clients. "Everyone here has welcomed me with open arms, from the attorneys to the volunteers," Tennison said at the time. Adachi had defended Tennison at trial. He encouraged him to take a workshop on job training and life skills after being released from prison. On the day of his graduation Adachi offered him the job. "It's great to have somebody working on our staff who can relate to our clients," Adachi said. There were a few challenges Adachi couldn't meet. He was the public face behind Measure B, a 2010 ballot initiative to rein in city pensions. He knew the measure would be unpopular—it lost 57 to 43 percent—but gave it his best shot. "Leadership doesn't mean just going along to get along," he said at a debate over the measure. "This is not about going after workers. This is about preserving the great social network that we call San Francisco, of services, of caring for each other." The following year Adachi campaigned to succeed Newsom as mayor but got trounced by Ed Lee. He threw himself back into the work of running the office, while maintaining personal pursuits including, notably, filmmaking. Race relations were a recurring theme. He wrote and directed "The Slanted Screen," a documentary about the portrayal of Asian men in film and television, and "America Needs a Racial Facial," an eight-minute history of racism in America. He also co-directed and starred in "Defender," a 2017 film about his office's battle to represent immigrants in deportation proceedings. "No one lived life more fully than Jeff. And he would want us—in fact, he would demand us—to be strong," said a deputy who asked to be anonymous. "He empowered us to vigorously fight for the rights of immigrants and the undocumented, and he knew the only way to defeat Trump and anti-immigrant forces was to stand up straight in their faces and fight back." Details of Adachi's death were unclear over the weekend, but PD spokeswoman Katy St. Clair said he had been dining in North Beach with a friend when he began to have trouble breathing. EMTs were able to recover a pulse but he later died at the hospital. "We are all devastated," St. Clair said. It was not immediately clear how the office would be structured until a new public defender is appointed, but Chief Attorney Matt Gonzalez will continue to lead on a day-to-day basis. Adachi is survived by his wife, Mutsuko, and his daughter, Lauren. Solis said the number of people he personally touched over a 32-year career is boundless. "At the public defender's office, we knew he was always there for us, no matter what," she said. "We could do the most daring, radical and aggressive lawyering on behalf of the most marginalized people, even if that meant making powerful people angry—because he would have our back, always. And when Jeff had your back, you felt safe."