(This story ran on Sunday’s A1.)
By Raquel Maria Dillon | THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
In the early-morning hours, as his son was waging what would be a fatal fight with meningitis, Greg Fogg would leave his son’s San Francisco hospital room and sit down before a computer screen.
“I’d be up in the middle of the night on the computer in the hospital cafeteria,” he said. “You can’t sleep because you’re worried about tomorrow’s surgery, so you go downstairs and read the Web site.”
Now, two weeks after 15-year-old Garrett Fogg’s death, his father still gets up at 2 a.m. to check garrettfogg.com and the more than 1,330 messages of support that continue to grow in number.What began as a practical way to communicate with family members and friends soon became a vital connection and emotional support for the family. It’s a connection becoming more common as individuals, private companies and even hospitals offer the Internet as a way not only to communicate a loved one’s condition, but to cope.
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This story ran on Sunday’s A1 and with an audio slideshow online.
The editors were desperate for a piece about the growing popularity of the county fair among Latino families. I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say about the fake charreada or the Batalla de las Bandas. Then I found the trio, working musicians playing their hearts out on a small stage in between taco trucks and churro stands. They made me think of the boleros my grandfather loved and I knew how the music evokes nostalgia across generations of immigrants. Molina was also a great talker — bonus! I wanted to put him on the radio. Instead, I pitched a slideshow, only the second that the paper had ever done.
By Raquel Maria Dillon | THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
CHAD SURMICK | The Press Democrat
Of all the musical acts at the Sonoma County Fair, Trio Zaragoza plays the smallest stage. It’s barely a stage at all, just a corner near the picnic tables in the Mexican Village area.
With sweet romantic lyrics and delicate guitars, traditional trios take audience members on a trip down memory lane with the greatest hits of 1940s Mexico.
“We’re not ranch hands, we’re caballeros – the last gentlemen of the great Golden Age of Mexico,” said Carlos Molina, who manages the group and plays bass.
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This was the lead story in Sunday’s paper, one of several I wrote while following a clergy sexual abuse case, which might have been one of the biggest stories in Santa Rosa that summer.
By Raquel Maria Dillon | THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Bishop Daniel Walsh, breaking his public silence on the latest allegation of clergy sexual abuse, said Saturday he “acted in good faith and … with reasonable speed to notify authorities.”
In a letter being distributed at services this weekend, Walsh said he didn’t believe the Rev. Xavier Ochoa was a flight risk given his “many loyal supporters in Sonoma County.”
Ochoa, an assistant pastor at St. Francis Solano parish in Sonoma, has been charged with molesting three boys and is believed to have fled to Mexico.
Walsh and other church leaders have been criticized for failing to report Ochoa immediately when he confessed inappropriate behavior with one boy.
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