With stories
ing to call attention to the unthinking brutality of our prison system. Dostoevsky once said that the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. Ours do not speak well of us.
Reporter writes investigative stories, most recently focusing on the VA health-care crisis. He will tell a story about covering the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992.
Two stories: I profiled a woman who runs a 37,000acre cattle ranch by herself in some of the state’s most remote country. And I featured a 12-yearold Apache girl during her transition to womanhood in the Sunrise Ceremony. Both articles merged my love for the outdoors with Arizona’s culture, history and people. Maryann Pratt, the rancher, was an amazing personality — tough, kind, funny, lonely and intelligent. Kaila Perry, the Apache, was beautiful, innocent, courageous — and determined. I do mostly investigative journalism, a straightnews style. Those stories gave me a chance to at least pretend I’m a writer.
Reporter writes about immigration, Latino issues and minority communities. He will tell a story about investigating the murder of two Americans on the U.S.-Mexico border about 15 years ago.
As the immigration reporter, I am haunted by many stories. Migrants who have died crossing the Arizona desert. Americans assassinated on their way to Rocky Point. Families torn apart by deportations. But I still can’t shake the children I met last summer in the shelters in Reynosa, Mexico. One group was crouching on the ground protected from the blazing sun under a fruit tree. They all had been caught by the Mexican immigration authorities trying to cross the Rio Grande into south Texas. They were just kids, really. Boys. Yet they had traveled on their own many hundreds of miles from Central America.
I could only imagine the horrors they had experienced along the way. Now they were waiting to be deported back to some of the most violent countries in the world. I asked how many would try again. All raised their hands. Later, I watched them eat supper in the shelter’s dining hall. They ate in silence. They looked so young, yet also so old. I remember one boy looked up from his plate. He was about the same age as my 14-year-old son. Our eyes met, but I turned away quickly. I didn’t want him to know I was thinking of my own children, home safe back in Phoenix.