Four years ago, I walked into a newsroom at 2:15 in the afternoon for my first day as a full-fledged reporter. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and oh-so naïve. Little did I know, this day would become the first of many in which tragedy would strike, followed by instructions from an editor: "Go talk to the neighbors."
There was a murder. The next day’s headline would read that a man was bludgeoned to death.
As the new night crime reporter, I had to cover it. I went to the quiet north side neighborhood and began knocking on doors. Most people politely declined to comment or they just didn't answer. They were probably hiding in the bathroom like I do when the Girl Scouts come around. Not even Thin Mints can get me to the door.
One woman took pity on me and gave me the quote I needed. That was Sara Culley.
Our paths crossed again a few months ago for Ode. She was one of our storytellers. Hers is a story of triumph over tragedy and addiction, showing when life knocks you down, you get up again and again. That's a story I'll take any day over picking up the police blotter.
But there’s a saying in journalism, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
The crowbar killer made front-page news. Sara Culley’s incredible story would go untold for another four years.
Until I became a crime reporter, I used to love the sound of sirens. There was something so delightfully honest about them. In a small town, where keeping up appearances is a great American pastime, you don’t want to give the slightest inkling that you’re having trouble of any kind. You don’t want to land at the center of the town’s gossip mill for the next week or month or however long it takes until the next poor schmuck slips up. Everyone knows everyone, or knows of them. And boy, do they like to talk.
The shrieking sirens that broke the countryside silence signaled something was wrong, and it couldn’t be denied.
Chasing after these sirens and reporting on crimes around them often meant my feelings would get repressed and ignored because I had a job to do. Another deadline, another day.
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I got into journalism because I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to speak truth to power, to give a voice to the voiceless and to just do good work.
Instead, driving through town, I could take you on the felony crime tour of Sioux City, circa 2012.“Welcome aboard. I’m Ally, your cruise director. If you look over on your right, you’ll see the house where a woman was gunned down outside in a neighborhood dispute. In a few minutes, we’ll be passing the site of a rainy-day stabbing. Hold your photos, please. We’ll be getting closer.”
I spent hours scouring arrest logs for the scum of society. Sex offenders. Arsonists. Druggies. Myears became finely tuned to the garbled scanner traffic. The dispatcher’s call for all available rigs always caught my attention. “Engine 1. Engine 4. Engine 7. 5200 South Lewis Boulevard. Smoke inside a building. Engine 1. Engine 4. Engine 7. 5200 South Lewis Boulevard. Smoke inside a building. 15:26.”
I listened for fires, shootings, robberies, deadly car crashes and aggravated assaults with men wielding machetes. I’d run out of the newsroom with a notebook in hand and a camera strapped to my back to capture the scene.
If I missed anything, I’d have to call down to the police station at night. The same sergeant always answered the phone and gave me squat for information, saying,“Sorry, baby. I don’t have anything for you.”
I found out later, he pulled the same line on the other two women covering the dayside and weekend crime beats, but funny, the men hired into those positions never got “babied.”
At the time, I thought, “He can call me whatever he wants as long as I get my story.” I was up against a deadline. Self-respect would have to wait another day.
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Months went by, and I felt like I was aging in dog years. Repeated exposure to death, violence and human suffering does things to you. In fields like nursing and psychology, this has a name. It’s recognized as compassion fatigue or secondary trauma. In the newsroom, they might just call it,“Keep typing.”
At times, I questioned if I had the right to feel exhausted, angry and depressed because I wasn’t on the frontlines. I wasn’t reporting from Baghdad or Beirut, where dozens of journalists have died in the line of duty, putting this profession, this public service before their own safety. I certainly wasn’t on par with Edna Buchanan who reported on more than 3,000 murders in Miami during her years as a crime reporter. I wasn’t being shot at or rushing into burning buildings.
I didn’t have to witness what, I imagine, was a gruesome scene on the train bridge at the South Dakota border, where several rescue crews had to put their lives at risk and walk out on the railroad ties above the river to clean up a woman’s remains after the locomotive hit her.
At that scene, members of the media were cordoned off in the parking lot of Sugar Daddy’s Casino. We waited over three hours to hear what happened. The sun went down and took the warmth with it. Just three months into the job, I didn’t know to keep extra clothes and a practical pair of shoes in my car. One of the TV reporters graciously gave me his jacket to cover my bare arms.
But nothing could protect me from what I was about to feel.
Finally, the train began chugging forward. The horn blared long and loud into the night.
The police chief came over and said for the record, “We’re just starting the investigation.” That was all I needed. I had my quote.
I went back to the newsroom and wrote 102 words about this woman’s death. Then, after working through dinner, I went home and cried for myself, for the crews out on the bridge, for the woman and her family.
By morning, it was ruled a suicide.
Twelve hours earlier, if anyone had asked about my day, I might have said, “My day was bad but not as bad as hers.” It might seem insensitive, but I had to find a way to survive so I wouldn’t be the next hopeless case teetering on the top rungs of the Vet’s Bridge threatening to jump and getting talked down with the promise of a cheeseburger. Somehow, I had to survive. Because a cheeseburger just wouldn’t do.
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Every day that I walked through the door to the newsroom, I didn’t know what I would have to do, what calls I would have to make or what crime scenes I would have to see. My faith in humanity slowly slipped away with every crackling dispatch that came over the scanner.
What could I say to the mother who had just picked up her daughter’s death certificate, having lost the fight to addiction out behind an office supply store? What words of comfort could I offer to the parents of a 16-year-old girl who went into the icy water to save her little brother but drowned?
What could I make of a Christmas Day suicide, where a man held his wife hostage, assaulted her and threatened to kill her?
According to a press release, she escaped, but their two children were still in the house, and he was armed. A 12-hour standoff with police ended when the man turned the gun on himself.
To get that particular story, when I arrived, the police were gone. The neighborhood was eerily quiet. A wreath with a bright red bow hung on the front door of a two-story house that had a carpet cleaning van parked in the driveway on the day after Christmas.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the bloodstains that I didn’t have to see.
Trying to make sense of yet another tragedy, I started knocking on neighbors’ doors, waiting for answers that wouldn’t come, in a place I didn’t want to be.
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Ally Karsyn is the arts producer and weekday afternoon announcer at Siouxland Public. She is also the founder, producer and host of Ode, a storytelling series where community members tell true stories on stage to promote positive impact through empathy. It is produced by Siouxland Public Media.
At Ode’s next event, hear the stories of Siouxland immigrants from around the world, listen to live music and get a taste of authentic East African cuisine at 7 p.m. Friday, November 18 at the Sioux City Art Center. The theme is "Stories without Borders: Raising immigrants’ voices." This special evening of entertainment is only $10 at the door.
For more information, visit facebook.com/odestorytelling. Listen to stories from past events at kwit.org/programs/ode.
