Journalist Paul de la Garza dies at 44

Paul de la Garza, the son of a shrimper who rose from the poverty of south Texas to become a columnist and foreign correspondent for some of America's top news organizations, died of a heart attack Sunday in his Tampa, Fla., home. He was 44.

De la Garza drew on his modest circumstances to bring an empathy to his stories for the Chicago Tribune, the St. Petersburg Times of Florida and The Associated Press.

Whether it was revealing a $400 million computer-system fiasco at the Department of Veterans Affairs or chronicling the ragged life of a street vendor on Chicago's West Side, de la Garza cared intensely about the people he wrote about, said his wife, Georgia.

De la Garza spent more than two decades in journalism, working at as a police reporter, a wire-service editor, a columnist and a foreign correspondent. Most recently, he was the military affairs writer for the St. Petersburg Times, where his stories about the VA's troubled computer system resulted in the massive project being shut down.

"He always wanted to get to the truth. He was very passionate about it," his wife said. Of his VA coverage, he had recently told her: "I know I've made a lot of headway, but there's so much more to do - so much more to do."

Last month, the St. Petersburg Times published de la Garza's account of visiting Qatar in July with Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, Commander of U.S. Central Command.

De la Garza had been trying to accompany the general for years, said Mike Konrad, an editor at the St. Petersburg Times and friend since 1986, when the men met as journalists in Carbondale, Ill.

"It was one of his coups," Konrad said. "He told me when he came back how the general told his staff to give him access to everything on the trip."

As a journalist, de la Garza was a master at cultivating sources and connecting with people, be they office workers, political figures or top generals, Konrad said.

"He'd been writing a lot about problems at the VA, it was so symbolic of the type of work did. He really believed in the mission of journalism. When he saw wrongs, he really wanted to make them right. He wanted to expose wrongdoing."

De la Garza was born in Port Isabel, Texas, where his father was a shrimper and his mother worked as a hotel maid. He began working in the 4th grade, selling bait to shrimpers along the Gulf of Mexico waters off South Texas.

One of six children, de la Garza, known as Chuy to friends and family, first considered writing as a career during junior high school.

Intending to study political science at the University of Texas at Austin, de la Garza took a journalism class and loved it. He worked as a reporter and editor at the student paper and then was offered a job in the Chicago bureau of The Associated Press.

"He had a nickel in his pocket when the AP offered him a job," Georgia de la Garza said. "His mom bought him a suit at Sears, and his brother gave him the money to fly to Chicago. When he first got there, he slept on his trench coat until he got his first paycheck. And some colleagues at the bureau gave him furniture."

De la Garza met his wife, a chef and artist, while he was stationed in southern Illinois for the AP. She said she fell in love with him on their first date, Valentine's Day, when he serenaded her with a song in the middle of a restaurant.

In 1994, de la Garza came to the Chicago Tribune as a metro reporter, and later became a foreign correspondent in the Mexico City bureau, an assignment he relished, said George de Lama, then the associate managing editor for foreign and national news.

"Paul was someone who was always willing to do any story no matter where it took him. He was one of the first Latinos on our staff to be a foreign correspondent," said de Lama, now deputy managing editor, news. "Paul loved being a foreign correspondent, where the assignment is more of a life than it is a job. I think he was happiest when he was living that life on the road looking for stories."

While serving as the Tribune's Mexico City bureau chief, de la Garza and his wife adopted two children in 2000 - Monica, now 12, and Carlos, 11.

He left the Tribune in 2000 and moved to Washington, D.C., to begin work with the St. Petersburg Times before moving to the newspaper's Tampa bureau.

A jazz music fan, de la Garza made an annual pilgrimage to the New Orleans jazz fast with a group of acquaintances. One of those festivals in particular stood out for friends and family: the 2003 version, when loved ones converged from around the country to celebrate de la Garza's having beaten Hodgkin's lymphoma.

In addition to his wife and children, de la Garza is survived by his mother, Jesusa, two brothers and a sister.

Services are pending.

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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.