Eli Saslow

A tragic collision on a football field connects a high school linebacker with a former college running back, who experienced a similar tragedy 26 years prior.

In the fall of 2013, Gerry Pickens became Orting, Washington’s first black policeman. He didn’t last there for very long.

A profile of the carefully cultivated leader of the civil rights movement, and his path from boy preacher to fixture of the establishment.

Javier Flores was hoping that an executive action by President Obama would prevent him from being deported to Mexico, leaving his wife and American-citizen children behind in Ohio. He’s now in La Mixtequita, Mexico, with few options to reunite with his family.

The fastest growing job in America—working as a nurse aide—is also among the hardest. The reporter follows a single mother hoping to find a stable job and build a better life for her family:

“I’m getting desperate, to be honest,” she told her classmates. “I need something good to happen. I’m hoping this might be it.”

Her hope was placed in the fastest-growing job in America – cornerstone of the recovery, what government economists referred to as “the opportunity point” in the greatest economy in the world. It was changing bedpans, pushing wheelchairs, cleaning catheters and brushing teeth. Pay was just better than minimum wage. Burnout rates were among the highest of any career.

An American struggles to prepare for life without her husband.

For the past five months, she had been documenting the gradual unraveling of their lives, in moments both mundane and monumental: the first visit to their home by immigration officers, the delivery of Zunaid’s deportation orders, his final trips to eat American ice cream and watch American basketball. Now only four days remained before he would be sent off to Bangladesh, a deportation that would upend not just one life but two. Zunaid would be forcibly separated from the United States after 20 years; his wife, an American citizen, would be forcibly separated from her husband.

Following one veteran’s difficult transition from military to civilian life. Reported by Eli Saslow, a 2014 Pulitzer recipient, and part of a multi-part series “examining the effects of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars on the 2.6 million American troops who served and fought”:

He had tried to replace the war by working construction, roughnecking in the oil fields and enrolling in community college. He had tried divorce and remarriage; alcohol and drugs; biker gangs and street racing; therapy appointments and trips to a shooting range for what he called “recoil therapy.” He had tried driving two hours to the hospital in Laramie, proclaiming himself in need of help and checking himself in.

On this day, he was on his way to try what he considered the most unlikely solution yet: a 9-to-5 office job as a case worker helping troubled veterans — even though he hated office work and had so far failed to help himself.

Taking the fight against child hunger on the road:

“The driver’s name was Rick Bible, and his 66-mile route through the hills of Greene County marked the government’s latest attempt to solve a rise in childhood hunger that had been worsening for seven consecutive years.

“Congress had tried to address it mostly by spending a record $15 billion each year to feed 21 million low-income children in their schools, but that left out the summer, so the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed to spend $400 million more on that. Governors came together to form a task force. Michelle Obama suggested items for a menu. Food banks opened thousands of summer cafes, and still only about 15 percent of eligible children received regular summer meals.

“So, earlier this year, a food bank in Tennessee came up with a plan to reverse the model. Instead of relying on children to find their own transportation to summer meal sites, it would bring food to children. The food bank bought four used school buses for $4,000 each and designed routes that snake through some of the most destitute land in the country, where poverty rates have almost doubled since 2009 and two-thirds of children qualify for free meals.”

Nearly six months after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, the family of one of the victims, 7-year-old Daniel Barden, grapples with what’s next:

“Daniel Barden. Seven. Dylan Hockley. Six. Ana Marquez-Greene. Six. Six. Six. Six. Seven. Six. How long could one minute last? Mark looked at the lawmakers and tried to pick out the three who already had refused to meet with the Newtown parents. Could he barge into their offices? Wait at their cars? Jackie counted the seconds in her head — ‘breathe, breathe,’ she told herself — believing she was holding it together until a lawmaker handed her a box of tissues. Hockley saw the tissues and thought about how she rarely cried anymore except for alone at night, unconscious in her sleep, awakening to a damp pillow.”

Former Minnesota State-Mankato head football coach Todd Hoffner’s career ended after being accused of producing and possessing child pornography. He’s fighting to get his reputation back:

“Hoffner and his lawyer held a news conference to address the judge’s decision. He wore a purple tie, the university color, and read a prepared statement about waking from a nightmare. But as he looked around the room, he was thinking more about all the things he might never get back:

“His team, which had gone 13–1 without him, earning Keen an award as regional coach of the year.

“His reputation, because a Google search for his name brought up images of him in an orange jumpsuit.

“His job, because the university said he was still under internal investigation and showed no signs of returning him to coaching.”