A story about a little girl named Angel, a spastic quadriplegic who is uncommonly dependent on continuously hearing a playlist of gospel music, was one of the most incredible and touching stories this newspaper has told in a long time.
This is about how Angel Rocker, 11, came to the reporter’s attention, how he dug out why she lives in such a limited world, how he got the story approved by a lawyer, through the hands of a careful editor and into last Sunday’s paper.
It is also about how the reporter depends on his own playlist of music — much like Angel does — as he labors through the most excruciating part of his craft.
For Thomas Lake, Angel’s story began unfolding one Sunday afternoon last September as he and fellow reporter Jeff Brumley were tossing a Frisbee at Memorial Park in Riverside. Between tosses, Lake spotted Deidra Rocker, a mother in unusual circumstances.
“She was looking out at the St. Johns, standing between her two wheelchair-bound children. She smiled at me, and I walked over and said ‘Hi.’ Jeff joined us a few minutes later. And her story just poured out — not surprising, since she had no one in the house she could really talk to. It was there that she pointed out Angel’s headphones and told us the gospel music played almost nonstop. A story angle came to my mind almost immediately.
“At the end of the conversation, Jeff and I helped her load the children into her van. Then we mentioned we were reporters from the paper, and we got her e-mail address and phone number.”
When I heard how Lake got started on the story, I asked him — in an exchange of e-mails — to tell me more. I hoped to give readers insight into how some stories come together. While some of what happens in newsrooms is routine, virtually assembly line in nature, much more isn’t. Even with a story as tender as Angel’s, getting the facts and staying within legal bounds can be difficult, according to Lake, 25.
“Once I started corresponding with her, Deidra gave me full access to her house and her children’s medical files. She seemed glad that someone was finally going to tell her story to the world,” he said. “The hardest part was pinning down the section about how Angel came to be in her condition. Deidra said Angel had been shaken by her father, but there were no court records to prove it. In fact, he’d never been arrested.”
In his story, Lake revealed that when a comatose Angel was taken to Wolfson Children’s Hospital, at age 2 months, doctors had diagnosed Shaken Baby Syndrome. The mother said she had left Angel in the care of the child’s father, who said she had choked on formula and he had clapped her on the back. The doctor’s report contradicted the father’s explanation, saying it failed to explain the bleeding on the brain. Lake was unable to contact the father.
“To get what I got in that section, I filed a (Freedom of Information Act) request with the Navy Criminal Investigative Service, called officials at two Georgia agencies, got the doctor who was there that night to find me Angel’s medical records, and used them to track down the original Jacksonville police report on the case,” Lake said. “After all that, I went through a rigorous back-and-forth with a media lawyer (Tim Conner with Holland & Knight, the newspaper’s legal counsel).
“It was the first time in my five years in newspapers that an attorney vetted the final copy of a story I’d written. It was quite an arduous process. We haggled a lot over little word changes as he attempted to read the story from the perspective of Angel’s father.”
Lake’s arduous encounter with the lawyer had one unexpected benefit: “I came away from the process more confident than ever about my story.”
For Lake, finding the story and getting the facts are not the hardest part. That comes next.
“I did most of the writing for this story while I was in the middle of two other projects — one on Navy medical malpractice, and one, Sunday’s A-1 centerpiece about a local soldier who died in Iraq — so I had to snatch time for it whenever I could, mostly on nights, weekends and holidays,” he said.
“As with most of my stories, the actual writing process was excruciating. Anyone who sits near me will tell you that when it comes time to actually string words together, I tend to fire up my iPod, put on my headphones to block out background noise and then sit there, writhing in front of my blank computer screen.
“I must have re-written the [first paragraph] eight or 10 times. The problem is that my expectations are too high — so when the words that come out don’t sound as grand as I’d imagined them, I delete them and start over. I have heard of other writers physically tying themselves to their chairs so they can’t escape the task at hand, and to me this desperate tactic sounds perfectly understandable.
“I usually end up having to coach myself through the process. I’ll talk to myself, saying things like, ‘This is an important story — give it all you’ve got’ or ‘Don’t settle’ or ‘Focus, focus, focus.’
“Lately I’ve found strength in a passage from the classic John Steinbeck novel East of Eden, in which a character named Adam Trask has lost his wife and can’t seem to get on with life. He lies around the house for years. Finally a wise friend named Samuel Hamilton approaches him, punches him in the mouth and says, ‘Go through the motions.’
“In other words, he should pretend to get on with his life until it actually starts to happen. That’s sort of how it works for me and writing. I force myself to put words on the screen, even if they’re bad, and I just keep refining them until I run out of time.
“By pretending to be a writer, I become one. I guess that’s true with a lot of life.”
Angel’s story was perhaps easier to shape because of her music, a 13-song diet, Lake said.
“The playlist angle seemed to give the story a sense of wonder that stories like these don’t always have. Lots of kids are disabled, and lots of parents have trouble caring for them, but I thought focusing on Angel’s music would really make readers curious.”
In the Sunday story, Lake wrote the following two paragraphs about how Angel ultimately left the hospital 11 years ago.
No one can say for sure why Angel came out of her coma. But Rocker does know this: As the chaplain performed last rites and the organ harvesters stood by, she camped by Angel’s bed with a little yellow tape player, cranking Kirk Franklin and the Family in one long mellifluous stream.
After 11 days at the hospital, Rocker took Angel home. Her brain was crippled. She never crawled or said a word. But her lack of sight probably sharpened her hearing, and music lit up her world.
The bulk of the editing on the story was done by John Timpe, assistant lifestyle editor, “who makes every story better through thoughtful suggestions and an uncommon willingness to give and take,” according to Lake. Photographer Jon M. Fletcher spent a day with Lake capturing images of Deidra Rocker, Angel, and her 3-year-old brother, Joseph “Jo-Jo” Washington Jr. An especially talented designer, Jennifer Fish DeCamp, molded it all into a remarkable Lifestyle cover package.
Then, just hours after Lake’s story went to press, the story took another turn: Angel’s brother Jo-Jo died. He had a rare chromosomal defect that affected major organs and had been hospitalized with severe breathing problems. His death appeared to have been caused by complications following a tracheotomy, according to the story Lake wrote for Tuesday’s paper.
Sidebar information with the Sunday story told readers how they could help Angel’s mother, who was declared bankrupt recently. Calls and e-mails and contributions followed.
“I’m pretty blown away by readers’ generosity,” Lake said, noting that FreshMinistries reported getting more than $1,000 for Angel, the Navy Federal Credit Union reported an additional $3,734 as of Thursday, and one man had promised to buy Angel a new iPod, all as a result of Lake’s story.
“That should help Deidra cover some of the expenses of Jo-Jo’s funeral,” he said.
Lake is one of six children home-schooled by a mother who never went to college: “Elizabeth Lake, one of the best-read and most brilliant people I’ve ever met.”
He received an associate’s degree from Herkimer County Community College in upstate New York and a bachelor’s degree from Gordon College, a small Christian liberal arts college in Wenham, Mass. His first full-time newspaper job was at The Press-Sentinel, a twice-weekly in Jesup, Ga. From there he went to The Salem News, a small daily in Massachusetts. He joined the Times-Union in September 2004.
“I love to tell stories,” he said. “It’s a rare thing to get paid for that, so I consider myself very fortunate.”
