essay

On a summer day of 1988, with only a plastic bag full of homemade wheat bread and desire for a better life, my father and his friend crossed an old wire fence as if they were going on a picnic. Two minutes later, they were stepping on American soil.

In the gray dawn of the morning he was supposed to leave, my dad came into my room. He sat on the edge of my bed, making a depression in the sheets. He told me to pack my bags and that he would come back in about an hour to get my sister and I — we were going back to Colorado.

Correspondent Anna King is usually out and about in the region covering agriculture, Hanford, fires and more. But you haven’t heard from her since early June. Why? COVID-19. Here she shares her personal struggle and diary recording her ordeal.