George Pawlaczyk

Turned out about 20 investigative series working on all but a few with my reporting partner Beth Hundsdorfer.

This involved finding suitable subjects for investigation primarily in areas of state government and social justice reporting. During this time we also turned out daily stories. Beth covered a court and crime reporting beat. I worked general assignment.

Beth and I controlled nearly all aspects of presentation; choosing sidebars to enhance storytelling and recommending photos. Of course I would expect that at the Times editors would be directly involved in this.

We also closely worked together on the writing. We worked together nearly every day for two decades, which might be a record for two reportorial egos working in sync without psychological bloodletting.

I would say the most valuable skill we have in common is recognizing the story in the first place and realizing, that during a long haul of investigating the story may significantly change.

Investigative reporter. I did a lot of watchdog stuff at The Record, especially on runaway police overtime. I spent one cold night in a car outside the home of a police captain who was supposed to be working overtime. In the morning as he walked to his driveway I asked him why he signed the overtime sheet as working but spent the night at home. Local TV actually commended the front pager that resulted.

On another story, I checked with our attorney and then asked a source to carry my tape recorder in her pocket when she went to a parking commissioner's office to pay tickets. As I suspected, the commissioner bragged how she fixed tickets so her family members wouldn't have to pay. That story generated about a hundred letters to the editors.

More importantly, I broke a series of stories about a 13-year-old girl who was repeatedly sexually assaulted by older teenaged boys who had formed a sex club. That reporting dominated local headlines for weeks.

Covered a suburban beat at first. Then they let me do whatever I wanted. In 1972 when Governor Nelson Rockefeller passed his famous life sentence drug law, I turned up a series of stories by hanging out in the poorer sections of Albany.

In the city court I encountered Larry Wimberly who told me how detectives hung him by the feet over a frozen Hudson one night until he revealed where he bought his heroin. I found other young black men who experienced similar brutality and realized the drug law was aimed at users, not dealers.

I wrote a story about a 16-year old young man sentenced to state prison for five years as a first offender for possessing cocaine. The AP ran it under the headline, "Youngest Lifer," because he was also sentenced to lifetime parole.