Scott Mc Kiernan Presents zReportage.com Issue #1057 Story of the Week: Published TUESDAY October 6, 2026: ‘A FAMILY’S AGONY: How California Failed Califia Carlisle’ from ZUMA represented Pulitzer winner RENEE C. BYER and investigative reporter Tom Philp at The Sacramento Bee: Laura Alicia Carlisle was born on Nov. 15, 2024, behind the Express Stop liquor store on Sacramento’s Juilliard Drive. Tests would soon show that Laura was addicted to fentanyl, just like her homeless mother, Califia Carlisle. Firefighters from a nearby station whisked mother and daughter to Mercy General Hospital in the middle of the night. The phone would soon ring at the home of Califia’s father, a stunned Christopher Carlisle, who learned he was a grandfather. Carlisle and his fiancee at the time, Anne Marie Flaherty, raced to the hospital to briefly see Laura and Califia. When they returned the next morning, Califia was gone. She had walked out of the hospital to return to a life of addiction, her schizophrenia untreated on the Sacramento streets. Her final words to a nurse as she left: ‘Give the baby to my dad.’ And so goes one of the great contradictions in how California oversees its most vulnerable residents. Welcome to ‘A FAMILY’S AGONY: How California Failed Califia Carlisle’
#zumapress #zreportage #reportage #journalism
