It’s a difficult thing, interviewing people about their desolation. But an Associated Press team went to Grays Harbor County, Washington, and came away with a deeply reported portrait of a place that had voted Democrat in every presidential election since 1932, but placed a bet on Donald Trump in November as its rescuer from addiction and economic malaise.
Sensitively and penetratingly, the team of Claire Galofaro, David Goldman and Martha Irvine used text, photos and video to tell the tale of an old logging county that “answered Donald Trump's call to the country's forgotten corners.” A half-year into the Republican’s term, they found varying degrees of faith in his ability to make a difference in their lives.
The latest installment in the AP’s Trump Country series is the Beat of the Week.
The team reported aggressively before arriving in Grays Harbor, talking to politicians, advocacy groups and everyday people to try to get a sense of the place and those who might best tell its story. But that did little to prepare them for what they encountered once on the ground, perhaps best exemplified by the images – in video and photos – of a young man shooting up under a bridge near a memorial to Kurt Cobain, the rock star and son of Grays Harbor who himself died of an overdose.
People on all sides of this issue were wary. ...The AP team worked hard to assure its sources that their stories were in trusted hands.
People on all sides of this issue were wary. Trump’s supporters feel under siege in the media; community activists hated to see their town in a story about deaths of despair; public health officials worried that the reporters would scare off clients struggling with drug addiction whose trust they had worked for years and years to earn.
Again and again, they worked hard to assure sources that their stories were in trusted hands. They met with the health department employees who run the needle exchange for over an hour to coax them into letting them report and shoot there. The employees were reluctant at first, fearing it would be disruptive or intimidating to their clients. But eventually, they were convinced that the reporters would be respectful, and that the stories of people still struggling with addiction are important voices often left unheard. With the team in place, many who came to the exchange were open about their addiction and its toll on their lives.
The team had been told not to go to the river tent city without an invite – not because it is dangerous, but because it is a tight-knit community distrustful of outsiders and mourning the loss of family member. They hung around the needle exchange for hours and got to know people who live on the river, and eventually they were told it would be OK to visit. That connection proved integral to telling the story of this place and its most vulnerable citizens.
The same was true of officials at the methadone clinic, which at first forbade the team from interviewing patients, on or off camera. But they worked with the managers to set parameters that made them comfortable enough to allow them access for one morning; there, they met more people trying desperately to stay off drugs and rebuild their lives, while terrified that changes to the health care system might make that impossible.
The Rev. Sarah Monroe reveals a tattoo decorated with the initials of those in her community who died young, in Aberdeen, Wash., June 13, 2017. Monroe has already held seven funerals this year. She tallies the dead on the tattoo that winds around her bicep.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Forrest Wood, 24, injects heroin into his arm under a bridge along the Wishkah River at Kurt Cobain Memorial Park in Aberdeen, Wash., June 13, 2017. Wood grew up here watching drugs take hold of his relatives, and swore that he would get out of this place. But he started taking opioid painkillers as a teenager, and before he knew it he was shooting heroin.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Robert LaCount, a recovering addict, stands outside an old church he is fixing up as a community center in Hoquiam, Wash., June 12, 2017. For years, LaCount cycled in and out of jail and it did nothing to stop the addiction. He got clean nine years ago and now runs a sober housing program where he fields 10 calls a day that he has to turn away because there's far more need than resources.
AP Photo / David Goldman
A man walks in front of a dilapidated motel in a rundown section of Aberdeen, Wash., June 13, 2017. The county's population is shrinking, growing sicker and poorer as many young and able people move away. Just 15 percent of those left behind have college degrees, and there is a critical shortage of doctors.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Dilapidated storefronts in Aberdeen, Wash., stand along baskets of pink petunias, watered regularly by residents trying to make their city feel alive again, on June 16, 2017. Six months into Donald Trump's presidency, his supporters in this county, battered by drugs and death, maintain differing degrees of faith that he will keep his promise to fix the rotting working class economy at the root of this plague.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Tarryn Vick takes her dose of methadone at the Evergreen Treatment Services clinic in Hoquiam, Wash., June 15, 2017. Grays Harbor County public health department last year collected 750,000 needles at its syringe exchange, an incredible number for a small town, but still down from more than 900,000 the year before. They attribute that improvement to the methadone clinic that helps nearly 500 people stay off drugs.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Chris Burkett swaps old needles for new ones at a needle exchange program run by the Grays Harbor County Public Health and Social Services Department in Aberdeen, Wash., June 14, 2017. Grays Harbor County public health department last year collected 750,000 needles at the exchange designed to stem the tide of disease.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Verna MacDonald, 87, right, who is on Medicare, sits for a free meal at Chaplains on the Harbor church in Westport, Wash., June 15, 2017. The county's population is growing older, sicker and poorer, and there is a critical shortage of doctors because it's hard to practice medicine in poor, rural places.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Staci Hadley, right, and boyfriend Deric Hensler rearrange their personal items from their car, out of which they live, in Aberdeen, Wash., June 14, 2017. The couple had gotten clean in a methadone program and started building a better life. Then Hensler lost his job and insurance, and couldn't get methadone anymore. Now they're back on drugs and living in their car.
AP Photo / David Goldman
A logging truck drives through Aberdeen, Wash., June 16, 2017. Aberdeen was built as a boom town at the turn of the 20th century. Millionaire lumber barons built mansions on the hills and traffic that backed up as the drawbridge leading into town seesawed up and down for ship after ship packed with logs and lumber. Now that drawbridge pretty much stays put.
AP Photo / David Goldman
People wait in line for the Evergreen Treatment Services methadone clinic to open in Hoquiam, Wash., June 15, 2017. When a Penn State sociologist mapped places experiencing a rise in “deaths of despair” – from drugs, alcohol and suicide wrought by the decimation of jobs – it looked eerily similar to an election map of Trump’s victory, from New England through the Rust Belt all the way to the rural coast of Washington.
AP Photo / David Goldman
Misty Micheau Bushnell looks over the memorial marking the spot where her boyfriend, Shawn Vann Schreck, died two days earlier in a homeless encampment along the river in Aberdeen, Wash., June 14, 2017. Bushnell said his death shook her so much she thinks she's ready to move away, someplace indoors, and she hopes her methamphetamine addiction won't follow her.
AP Photo / David Goldman
And so they told the stories of the Rev. Sarah Moore, who tallies the initials of those lost to drug overdoses on a tattoo that winds around her bicep. And Anjelic Baker, who cries at the prospect of Obamacare disappearing – and with it, her drug treatments. And antique store owner Stacie Blodgett: “America, when viewed through the bars on Blodgett's windows, looks a lot less great than it used to be,” so she voted for Trump. Now, she’s beginning to regret it.
"Has he done anything good yet?" she asks. "Has he?"
For a harrowing and essential report on a community whose suffering mirrors that of many other corners of America, Garofalo, Goldman and Irvine win this week’s $500 prize.