Amid the chaos and broken lives in Hurricane Michael’s aftermath, photographer David Goldman was combing for images of how people were managing during power outages. He decided to check grocery store parking lots that had become aid distribution points, thinking that if anyone needed to spend the night in a car, he might find them there. He discovered an especially heartbreaking story in a Walmart parking lot: A newborn baby was spending one of his first nights in the back of a pickup with his parents.
The local hospital, heavily damaged, had turned the mother away the day after the hurricane. The couple drove to Alabama seeking a hospital able to accept them but found no lodgings in a town already clogged with hurricane evacuees. They drove back to find their home – soggy, mosquito-ridden and unlivable, with nobody to help them. They resolved to camp out at Walmart, where Goldman found them. He checked in with them over a couple of days – no easy feat, as the family’s cellphone had been stolen, but Goldman kept checking back until he found them again.
Lorrainda Smith, right, and husband Wilmer Capps prepare to spend the first night out of the hospital with their 2-day-old son Luke in a Walmart parking lot in Panama City, Fla., Oct. 15, 2018. Capps says he and wife had no choice but to camp out the night their son was released from an Alabama hospital because their home in Panama City was badly damaged by Hurricane Michael.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Lorrainda Smith, feeds her 2-day-old son Luke out of the back of her pickup truck while preparing to spend the first night out of the hospital with her newborn and husband in a parking lot in Panama City, Fla., Oct. 15, 2018, after the family's home was badly damaged by Hurricane Michael. “One day we had it all, the next we had nothing,” said Smith. “This is not what I thought I'd be bringing him back to.”
AP Photo / David Goldman
Wilmer Capps holds his 2-day-old son, Luke, while preparing with his wife, not pictured, to spend the night in their truck in a Panama City, Fla., parking lot, Oct. 15, 2018, after their home was heavily damaged by Hurricane Michael. “If I get too depressed I look at him and it makes me smile. He's precious,” said Capps whose place of employment was destroyed as well. “He’s going to bring us through this one way or another.”
AP Photo / David Goldman
Lorrainda Smith feeds her 2-day-old son, Luke, while preparing with husband Wilmer Capps, right, to spend their first night out of the hospital in a parking lot in Panama City, Fla., Oct. 15, 2018, after their home was heavily damaged by Hurricane Michael. Capps says he and wife had no choice but to camp out the night their son was released from an Alabama hospital because their home in Panama City was badly damaged by Hurricane Michael.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Wilmer Capps takes the temperature of his 2-day-old son Luke while preparing with his wife Lorrainda Smith to spend the first night out of the hospital in a parking lot in Panama City, Fla., Oct. 15, 2018.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Lorrainda Smith, sits with her 2-day-old son, Luke, while preparing with her husband Wilmer Capps, rear, to spend the night in their truck in a parking lot in Panama City, Fla., Oct. 15, 2018, after their home was damaged by Hurricane Michael. The family eventually received a police escort to a nearby hospital for assistance as a nightly curfew prohibits the public from being out past dark.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Goldman knew he had a great visual story. And he knew there was a great story to write. Not being in a position to write the story himself, he turned to a colleague. He kept reporter Jay Reeves, also working in the hurricane zone, informed about the family.
Reeves wouldn’t be able to meet with the family, but from their discussions, Goldman knew the elements Reeves would need to write a compelling text piece. At Goldman’s final meeting with the father, he recorded a short audio interview to get the missing details and some additional quotes. He sent Reeves all his notes and the interview via email. From those pieces, Reeves crafted the narrative.
“On a starry night, mother sat in the bed of the family’s pickup truck; her child sat in a car seat beside her,” the story read. “Dad sat in the dark and pondered how it could be that his son’s first night out of a hospital could be spent outside a big-box retailer because of a lack of help.”
Goldman sent all his notes and a short audio interview to Reeves via email. From those pieces, Jay crafted the story.
The moving words and compelling photo package resonated. Goldman’s Twitter lit up with responses. Readers hoping to find a way to help “baby Luke” reached out to Goldman and Reeves by email, the Miami bureau by phone and even by web inquiry to the AP's Corporate Communications office in New York. The story/photo package netted 471 source matches and more than more than 76,000 social media engagements, and it was carried by Time Magazine, USA Today, The New York Times and NPR, among others.
For their unmatched story that reminded the world that the story of Hurricane Michael is far from over, and for their collaboration to bring both words and images to the world, Reeves and Goldman win this week’s Best of the States.