Katie & Justin

If the last week and half I wrote about was all about fun, then the next week and half was all about work.

Just as I wanted the baby to hold out for Hamilton and the Backstreet Boys, I’ve also been working on finishing up a longterm investigation and was hoping to get it done before Baby D’s arrival. I’m starting to think now that the baby will be born the same day the story is published, which would actually be kind of neat as long as I’m not making edits in the hospital!

I put in the first public records request for this particular story back in January and then started working on it full-time in May, so it’s a been a long one in the making. And it’s sooooo close to being done. But just as babies’ birthdays are unpredictable, so is the news business!

One example of how weird my job can be:  I needed to get a hold of someone for the story, and while usually we are able to track people down with phone numbers or addresses, I kept coming up empty-handed on this person. I couldn’t find a way to reach them. But it was pretty imperative that I contact them for the article.

After going to the court house and checking for any updates on a related case, I thought I finally scored some good luck. There was a document in one of the new filings that gave an address, which I believe had been pulled from a police report. Yesssss, just what I needed! 

When I got back to my desk, however, I realized that the address listed does not actually exist. While it named a suburb, the street and house number provided was in Chicago. Noooooo, I was so close! 

So, the next step was trying to figure out how this address could have been written down incorrectly. I flipped around numbers and tried scanning the maps of some nearby suburbs. I knew this person graduated high school from the same town that was listed on the document so I figured that was most likely to be correct. My editor then suggested that Chicago cops are probably so used to writing down four digits (for city addresses) that maybe it should have been three in this suburb and they added an extra one by mistake. After playing around some more, we both came across an apartment complex that we thought could be the right place. The address, however, changed from something like 8111 79th street in the document to our best guess, 801 97th street.

Then that Saturday night — ten days before my due date — I went out to see it in person, crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t have to knock on every single door! Turns out there were multiple buildings as part of that apartment complex, and after walking around them, I found one labeled 811. A good sign! And after scanning the names on the mailboxes, I found the name I was looking for and thus, the apartment number. Two for two!

The person I needed wasn’t there, but their father was. And after talking to him for a bit, he gave me the person’s cell phone number. Yay, mission complete! It’s still crazy to me that the whole plan worked, but I’m thankful it did. (Also insane was how COMPLETELY wrong the police wrote down the address to begin with!) It got me one big step closer to finishing the story before Baby D comes.

Another bonus perk from that night: Turns out I was near a Portillo’s so I got a chance to stop there for a tasty dinner! :)