DENVER — Many Denverites were introduced to Courtney Johnston in April, on the night her husband Mike was elected mayor.
Courtney said she may have overstayed her welcome at the podium with a prolonged introductory speech.
"It was like a comedy of errors," she said. "My printer had broken, so I sketched them out. Didn’t have my glasses. The lights were glaring. I had had a little too much prosecco."
She shared - and overshared - on that night. But what she left out was the work she has been doing for the people of Colorado for the last 16 years.
Courtney Johnston is a chief deputy in the Denver district attorney's office.
"I think justice means something different for every victim," she said. "I see our role as two-pronged – we are here to support the victims, and also to try to achieve justice on their behalf. We also have an obligation to focus on community safety."
"Nearly every homicide we handle has a loved one, and those are just -- it doesn't matter what the circumstances were. The pain of that loss is still the same," she said.
As a prosecutor, a majority of her cases involve child abuse or domestic violence.
"I think we have to continue to learn. It doesn't matter how long we do the job. We can't assume what someone else's experience is," she said. "And we have to be able to hear them."
She said she tries to find justice for broken families.
"It definitely makes things harder to fathom sometimes too - with those really egregious child abuse cases or sex assaults or whatever. Yes I extend grace, but there's also times when I fail to understand how things could have happened the way they did," she said.
Outside of work, Courtney Johnston also holds court at home.
She and the mayor have two teenagers, a preteen, a couple of cats and a dog.
She said that as a mom she hopes to make the world a little bit better.
"Raise kind, helpful kids who know about what's going on in the world, and that is the hardest challenge, I think, that I have," she said. "They are good kids and they're sweet kids, but it's tough to a be teenager in this world. So I think first and foremost that's a priority."
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