LEADERSHIP PRAYER BREAKFAST

Please join business, education, and civic leaders around San Joaquin County for the 2026 San Joaquin County Leadership Prayer Breakfast on April 23, 2026, at Crossroads Grace Church at 1505 Moffat Blvd, Manteca. This annual event allows our community an opportunity to fellowship with each other, worship together, and pray for our local, state, and national leaders.

We are proud to welcome this year’s speaker, Michael Franzese, a former mobster who was a caporegime in the Colombo crime family in New York City, and son of former underboss Sonny Franzese. Franzese was enrolled in a pre-med program at Hofstra University, but dropped out to make money for his family after his father was sentenced to 50 years in prison for bank robbery in 1967. He eventually helped implement a scheme to defraud the federal government out of gasoline taxes in the early 1980s.

By the age of 35, in 1986, Fortune Magazine listed Franzese as number 18 on its list of the "Fifty Most Wealthy and Powerful Mafia Bosses". Franzese claimed that at the height of his career, he generated up to $8 million per week. In 1986, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on conspiracy charges, released in 1989, rearrested in 1991 for a parole violation, and ultimately released in 1994. During his time in prison, Franzese became a born-again Christian. Soon after being released, he walked away from the mob and retired to California, and became a motivational speaker, commentator, and writer.