Award-winning series of articles helps Cora Lee Walker get her home back
“Only one person was the beneficiary of a series of stories and editorials, and she was an elderly woman unable to write or to read the “Evening Independent”. The woman had been unfairly tricked out of her home…”
— National Newspaper Association
As a young reporter, I answered my phone one afternoon. It was a contact I had met at a neighborhood meeting of civil rights activists. He told me about an illiterate woman whose home was taken by eminent domain to clear the way for a new Interstate highway and who was now in danger of losing the new home she was given in exchange.
Over the subsequent weeks and months, as I wrote about Cora Lee Walker’s plight, my stories led to community outrage, multiple state investigations, and the eventual return of her home – and a national award for my reporting.
Here are scans of those long-ago articles>>
How can I help you?
Sheila Mullane Estrada
Phone: 727-480-6748
Email: gemcom@gate.net
Sheila Mullane Estrada’s journalism career began as a reporter for the Holyoke (Massachusetts) Transcript, and continued as an investigative reporter for the Sarasota Herald Tribune, the Lakeland Ledger, and the Evening Independent in Florida. She has earned a number of journalism awards, including the National Newspaper Association’s National Award for a Community Service Investigative Series, the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors for a Public Service Investigative Series, and an Award of Excellence from the FTP-NEA of Florida. Sheila is now a freelance journalist, graphic designer, and web developer, with her journalism work appearing in the Tampa Bay Times, Tampa Bay Newspapers, The Legal Examiner, The Bull & Bear Financial Report, The Monetary Digest, The Resource Investor, and Gold Stock News. Her public relations and creative services clients include Save The Children, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Lumos, the Hepatitis Foundation International, Springfield College, and St. Petersburg College.