As I was walking to our meeting last Wed. evening I passed a neighbor who asked me if I was going on one of my walk abouts. I replied no, I was going to do an interview. So who was I interviewing? My neighbor wanted to know. At this moment a female voice is heard replying, me! She was standing on the porch of a house waiting for the occupant to answer the door. It turned out Valdez had found a government id badge on the sidewalk and was knocking on the doors of nearby houses to see if anyone inside had lost their id badge. I’m told there are two types of people in this world: those who knock on doors after finding a government id badge and those who just keep walking.
I had the opportunity to sit and talk with The Washington City Paper’s Angela Valdez last week at the Looking Glass Lounge. Valdez, 30, hails from Portland, Oregon and is a recent DC transplant. Before coming to DC, Valdez had attended New York University where she studied journalism and international politics. From NYU she went to Flint, Michigan where she had a one year internship at the Flint Journal covering the labor beat. One of her most memorable/disturbing stories from this time period include the covering of a school shooting where a six year old shot another six year old. Following her internship Valdez headed off to the Philadelphia Inquirer to cover the suburbs for two years. While in Philadelphia Valdez covered many crime stories including one where a guy killed his wife and buried her in the drywall of his basement. At this point Valdez became a bit tired with the newspaper industry and “rebelled to Grad school.”. [Profile continues after the jump.] (more…)
