Her foot was in the door. This weekend, her feet will be firmly on the concrete as she runs through Newport Beach and Costa Mesa during the marathon, which starts near Fashion Island.<\/p>\n
![\"Arlene](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777591989_149_.jpeg\")
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Arlene Garcia goes for a run at a park near her Jones Day law firm in Irvine.<\/p>\n
(Don Leach \/ Staff Photographer)<\/p>\n
Garcia, now 32, no longer has to run between jobs. She\u2019s running the 5K on Saturday and the half marathon on Sunday at the Hoag OC Marathon<\/a>, while helping Project Youth OC<\/a> hit a significant milestone.<\/p>\n The Santa Ana-based nonprofit, founded in 1981 as the philanthropic arm of the Orange County Bar Foundation, will reach $1 million in money raised to support local youth through a long-standing partnership with the OC Marathon that spans 22 years.<\/p>\n The initiative, known as the Road to $1 Million, supports funding programs focused on behavioral intervention, youth diversion and access to education and career pathways.<\/p>\n Laura Marcum, Project Youth OC executive director, said there are 325 runners lacing up their sneakers to support Project Youth OC this weekend, including Garcia and her team. Marcum, who said she is not a runner herself, is nevertheless running the half marathon.<\/p>\n \u201cI love the high-level community aspect,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re creating true system change. It\u2019s Hoag Health Systems, it\u2019s Orange County Marathon, it\u2019s PYOC. That\u2019s what happens when corporations and community groups all come together. It would not be possible if we didn\u2019t have those names and that support also backing us and our mission. This is what Orange County needs to be able to thrive, partnerships like this. There\u2019s always more that can be done when we work together.\u201d<\/p>\n Arlene Garcia rejoined the law firm at which she interned, Jones Day, in 2021.<\/p>\n (Don Leach \/ Staff Photographer)<\/p>\n Garcia believes that to be true. Growing up in a low-income family of seven with two parents who worked the night shift, she was proactive and applied for the Project Self internship in 2011, heading into her senior year at Saddleback High School. She said she was nervous at first, but the Jones Day employees made her feel welcome.<\/p>\n She returned in 2021, and last December she was promoted to a legal support special assistant, continuing to work her way up to a legal secretary position.<\/p>\n This partnership has helped her career and also sparked a running habit with a group from Jones Day. Last year, Garcia ran the full OC Marathon.<\/p>\n Hoag OC Marathon director Gary Kutscher, a Huntington Beach resident, said that Project Youth OC has been with the race since the very beginning. He always encourages people to run races for a charity or nonprofit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes the race greater than them just going and running 13 or 26 miles,\u201d Kutscher said. \u201cAnd I can\u2019t think of a better team to do it than Project Youth OC. The fact that they\u2019re reaching $1 million just shows their commitment to what they\u2019ve been doing for all of these years.\u201d<\/p>\n Project Youth OC also staffs what Kutscher calls the most difficult water station on the whole marathon course \u2014 the first one, at Mile 2.<\/p>\n Arlene Garcia will be running the half marathon at the OC Marathon on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n (Don Leach \/ Staff Photographer)<\/p>\n With the current running boom, the marathon, half marathon and 5K have all been sold out for weeks. Kutscher said the three races will total about 20,000 runners, with more than 6,000 expected for the kids run on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n Garcia, who now lives in Garden Grove, is more than happy to be in that group. It feels good for her to give back to the nonprofit that helped her back when she was a teenager, a path that now continues to shape her future today. Project Youth OC serves more than 1,500 youth and their families a year, Marcum said.<\/p>\n Garcia said she enjoys when the high school interns come into the office now, because she gets to pay it forward by mentoring them.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s amazing that they\u2019re continuing to still help kids, you know, and give them the opportunity that I had,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cI love seeing that, especially my work contributing to that and being a part of it, Team Jones Day for this. It\u2019s amazing that they want to help out kids that want a brighter future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arlene Garcia used to run back and forth between two jobs. OK, she would technically drive to get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,125082,125088,64914,22027,4194,125085,125087,125084,125086,125083,125081,2211,8654,2695,72],"class_list":["post-293995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-arlene-garcia","tag-career-pathway","tag-community-group","tag-high-school-student","tag-job","tag-jones-day","tag-kutscher","tag-laura-marcum","tag-long-standing-partnership","tag-oc-marathon-partnership","tag-project-youth-oc","tag-race","tag-runner","tag-weekend","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Arlene](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777591989_59_.jpeg\")
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