Race relations with Keep Runnin' Santa Ana

Aaron Garcia found himself leading a Latino community to a race in a city that declared itself unfriendly to immigrants. It was nothing new to him.

It’s long been proven that community-driven economies are more resilient to economic downturns, can improve the well-being of residents, and can create more local opportunities, all of which you’ll see evidence of throughout this story.

Keep Runnin’ Santa Ana is a community titan.

The man in charge of building that community? Aaron Garcia. A Santa Ana resident, born and bred, he laughs that he “was the kid who used to ditch baseball practice in high school because they used to make us run laps.” In his mid-20s he would run a couple of miles when “three miles was a big run,” but went on a health kick in late 2019 following a break-up.

When Ahmaud Arbery was murdered in February 2020, Garcia found it easy to fit the 2.23-mile tribute distance into his daily running routine (“It was the right thing to do to acknowledge what happened to him, and what was happening in other parts of the U.S.”), but then Covid-…