Seat: Redwood City · Major metro
San Mateo Superior Court runs two systems: MIDX (legacy, free name search no login) and Odyssey Public Portal (newer cases, also free, no login). Family law documents excluded from Odyssey online display. Main courthouse: 400 County Center, Redwood City. Records office by appointment only 8:30 AM–1:00 PM.
Start with the systems most likely to change your read of a person. Then cross-check custody, registries, and paper-trail sources before you go wider.
Run county and statewide court portals first. Civil, criminal, family, and lower-court systems are often separate, so this is where most missed records happen.
Use jail, corrections, and registry systems to catch records that do not show up in a normal court search.
Recorder, assessor, prosecutor, records-request, and licensing sources help verify addresses, liens, ownership, agency records, and local context.
Federal court and incarceration systems sit outside local portals. Run them before you decide the search is clean.
California's Public Records Act (Gov. Code § 7920 et seq., formerly § 6250) is broad on paper but slower in practice — many agencies take 30 to 60 days, some longer. The biggest structural limit: California has NO unified statewide court case search. Each county's Superior Court runs its own portal, with wildly different interfaces and access rules. SB 1421 (2019) and SB 16 (2022) opened up some previously-sealed police misconduct and use-of-force records, which is meaningful for vetting work in safety contexts.
Typical response · 14 to 60 days for most records-request agencies; instant for online court and registry lookups (where available)