Journalism

Why I Became an Investigative Reporter

The summer of 1999 changed everything for me.

I was twelve years old, spending a few weeks at Camp La Junta on the banks of the Guadalupe River near Hunt, Texas — about twelve miles from my hometown of Kerrville. Founded in 1928, Camp La Junta was the kind of place where boys learned to paddle canoes, tie knots, and tell stories around a campfire.

Our cabin counselor was Thomas “Tommy” Redhorse, a 24-year-old graduate student in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Tommy was Cherokee Nation, from Oklahoma, and he brought an approach to summer camp that nobody had seen before.