In summary
Investigative reporter Byrhonda Lyons found Fredreaka’s story in a call log; her full story emerged only after exhaustive journalistic efforts.
For investigative journalist Byrhonda Lyons, the story of Fredreaka Jack began with a single line in a police call log.
A woman had died of complications of diabetes at a home that’s publicly funded by California’s parole system. How could that happen?
Byrhonda is an award-winning investigative journalist at CalMatters. Her reporting has uncovered how California repeatedly transfers mentally ill prisoners, the lack of diversity among local judges, and how the CHP towed and impounded people’s vehicles in violation of a federal court order.
Fredreaka’s story came to light when Byrhonda spent a year investigating the state’s parolee rehab program. Her reporting found that fewer than half the participants completed one of the program’s services, lax oversight of service providers and no measurement of whether the $100 million program was working. Her story prompted the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to monitor parolees’ job outcomes and re-incarceration rates, verify providers’ licenses, and inspect the 450 treatment centers funded by the state.
But Byrhonda still wanted to learn more about Fredreaka’s story. She shared with us the details of her reporting:
What stood out to you when you first saw Fredreaka’s death in the call logs?
I wanted to know who the person was and how the person died. From there, I worked backward, searching the coroner’s records for the date and using Google and the process of elimination to target my search. I landed on Fredreaka Jack. After I learned that she was 37 and died of complications from diabetes, I had to get to the bottom of what happened.
I’m the child of a nurse with 40-plus years of experience and have close friends and family members who live with diabetes. I needed to figure out how a 37-year-old could die from complications of diabetes while in a state-funded re-entry home.
I understood that my reporting had to at least answer two questions: Was she diagnosed with diabetes? And was she taking her medication? Trying to get to those answers took months of waiting, asking a million questions and months of finding dead ends.
When I was able to find and speak with her mother, Sharon Jack, doors began to open and I started piecing together a very complicated story.
What did you write in your first letter to Fredreaka’s mother?
Fredreaka had a Facebook page, and I used her friends list to locate some of her family, but they never responded. Then, I pulled out old-fashioned letterhead and sent them letters, explaining who I was and what I wanted.
I outlined my work, sharing my biography, previous stories and my contact information, and people responded. I sent letters to everyone whom I thought could be related to Jack. When I finally met her mother, Sharon, she mentioned that the letters reached their cousins in another state. The family was shocked and thankful for the lengths I went through to find them.
What stands out from your visit to Louisiana?
My trip to Louisiana was taxing, emotionally. It was clear that Jack’s family loved her, and they were always searching for her.
How many pages of records did you receive in total on Fredreaka?
I received about 3,000 pages of documents related to this story. Whenever I thought I knew something, I’d learn about another agency or healthcare provider with medical records for Fredreaka.
I spent hours walking Sharon Jack through how to send an email and how to sign digital release forms for Fredreaka’s documents, and she was a trooper. She helped me every time I had a request.
Sometimes, we forget how opaque the government can be for people who don’t frequently request documents and people who don’t know how these bureaucracies work. Walking Sharon through the ins and outs was a great lesson about how release forms can be a tool to exclude, even if it’s not meant to be that way.
This story would not have been possible without Sharon’s help retrieving her daughter’s medical records.
What support did you have in reporting this story?
CalMatters gave me the space and time to keep reporting. At every turn, I had to keep digging. CalMatters allowed me to snail mail possible family members, read and annotate thousands of documents, and take time exploring what went wrong in Jack’s death.
All of those tasks contributed significantly to this story. My editors also were willing to delay our initial plan to run this story last year because a better story was looming. Looking back, it was worth it.
How did you push through reporting on such an emotional story?
I spent about two weeks grappling with her death, which is typically my process for covering heavy topics. I sit with tragedy, and let it wash over me.
I’m human, and the details of Jack’s life and death were gripping. But that’s the first step for me. Once I’ve sat with something, I can move forward with it in a curious manner, not in an emotional capacity.
My job is to move past that initial shock and tell a story that encompasses who she was and the details leading to her death. I use writing, reporting and documentation to illustrate one’s life, explain how a system failed and name the policy issues that made the failure possible. That’s my contribution to journalism. I believe that trying to do more or less than that does myself, my work and the subjects of the story a disservice.
