US celebrity judge dispensed compassion, charmed many

On a cold, rainy, gray day in April 2023, Wu Shengnan walked into a law office in Providence, Rhode Island, hoping for a few minutes with a US judge she had previously known only through a screen.

Wu, a Chinese lawyer then studying in Boston, Massachusetts, had watched clips of Judge Frank Caprio patiently adjudicating on minor offenses such as contested parking tickets. The clips had gained a following on Chinese social media, where Caprio was affectionately known as "Grandpa Judge".

When Wu telephoned the municipal court, she learned that Caprio had just retired. A clerk gave her the number of his family law office. She called again, explained who she was and left her details. Caprio was away in Miami, Florida, she was told, but would receive the message.

"Two months passed, and I had almost forgotten about it when my phone rang. It was Judge Caprio," Wu recalled. "I had assumed he was probably too busy to call back — and I would have completely understood if he hadn't."

Wu thought the meeting would last only five or 10 minutes. Instead, it began a friendship that drew Wu into the Caprio family's circle and continued after the judge's death from pancreatic cancer on Aug 20, 2025.

For David Caprio, one of the judge's sons, Wu's efforts to find his father had special meaning.

His father was not the kind of person simply to pose for a picture, sign the photographs Wu had brought with her and then send her on her way, David Caprio said. Their friendship embodied a lesson he had heard his father repeat hundreds of times: "You never realize that a very small thing you can do can change somebody's entire life."

In Wu's case, it did.

Judge Caprio kept in touch with her and encouraged her to take a United States bar examination. On March 11, 2024, after she passed the California Bar Exam, he returned to the Providence courtroom featured in his videos to preside over her swearing-in ceremony.

From the bench, Judge Caprio said it was good to be back in court to swear in a friend whom he believed would make a difference in the world. He urged Wu to carry that purpose with her, "even when you travel 7,000 miles to China".

Wu now runs her own law firm in Los Angeles, California, that provides legal services to China-connected businesses entering and operating in the US market.

Rhode Island is the smallest US state by area, covering about 4,000 square kilometers — about two-thirds the size of Shanghai. The Providence Municipal Court usually handles parking and traffic violations, breaches of city ordinances and other minor offenses.

The fines and penalties Caprio issued to offenders were often modest, but the pressures behind them were not. Before deciding what to do, Caprio would often ask defendants about their lives. The answers could be funny, but they also revealed lost jobs, illness, childcare difficulties and aging parents. A dispute over a ticket was sometimes a snapshot of a household under strain.

Those exchanges reached viewers through Caught in Providence, a reality court show featuring Judge Caprio.

The program had grown out of a local public-access television project run by Caprio's younger brother, Joe. In the mid-1990s, Joe Caprio was filming proceedings in the municipal court, and an edited version of the show later aired on Providence's ABC television affiliate.

In 2015, clips of the program began spreading on YouTube and other social media platforms. It went on to receive five Daytime Emmy nominations, most recently in July 2026.

The format was simple: a person stood before a judge and was given time to explain his or her case. The defendant needed no knowledge of the law.

At first, the Caprio family did not know how far the clips had traveled. Their first indication came from Chinese friends who told them the videos were going viral. Then, in restaurants and airports, Chinese people began approaching the judge. "He completely loved it," David Caprio said.

From 2018 to 2020, as the program gained national attention in the US and clips spread online, the family realized that Caprio's presence abroad might be greater than at home. Viewers in different societies were struck by the encounters in the Providence courtroom.

The reason, David Caprio believes, was not principally legal. Strip away the robe and the bench, he said, and his father was dealing "human being to human being".

Familiar values

Chinese viewers recognized familiar family values: caring for parents and children, helping someone to go through a difficult period, and not pushing one person down so another person can rise.

"Actually, you become stronger if you help people come up with you," David Caprio said.

The cases also exposed universal everyday pressures. People everywhere miss deadlines, worry about money, care for relatives, make mistakes and hope that their circumstances will be heard. Allowing people to describe those problems helped connect cultures "in a very human way", the judge's son explained.

Luo Weiqian, who translated the simplified Chinese edition of his memoir, published in August 2026, said some viewers questioned whether he too readily reduced fines for defendants facing financial or family hardship.

But the book showed where his decisions came from, she said.

The childhood chapters, which Luo said affected her most, traced how the son of Italian immigrants raised in a close working-class family, developed his ideas about mercy and responsibility. The memoir described the family, teachers and neighbors whose small acts of kindness had shaped the judge's character and beliefs.

One influence stood above the others. Judge Caprio often spoke of accompanying his father, Antonio, on his milk delivery rounds.

The family had little money, but the father would sometimes help customers who were struggling rather than press them for payment. His son absorbed the lesson that hardship should be understood before it was judged.

Caprio later followed a difficult path into law. Unable to afford the education he wanted, he worked during the day and attended law school at night. His courtroom demeanor can be put down to a mixture of a family history of work, lack of security and mutual help.

David Caprio said he hopes Chinese readers will see that the acts described in the book can be repeated in ordinary life. There is a familiar saying in English that nice people finish last. His father's story showed that "sometimes nice people finish first", he said.

After the judge's death, Wu remained in contact with David Caprio and the rest of the family. Asked how they now regarded the visitor who had once hoped for just five or 10 minutes with the famous judge, his answer was brief — "She's part of the family now."