The officer’s father and reporters from our partners at KQED think there’s more to his death.

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** THE WEEKLY REVEAL
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Saturday, December 21, 2024

Hello! In this issue:
* What a correctional officer’s death says about California’s prison system.
* Love Reveal? Tell us and you might hear your story on the air.
* Traveling over the holidays? We’ve cued up some of our favorite episodes for your playlist.
* We see the fall of Roe through the eyes of high school girls.


** THIS WEEK’S PODCAST
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** A Whistleblower in New Folsom Prison
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A photo of Valentino Rodriguez on his wedding day is displayed in his father’s office. Credit: Courtesy of KQED

When Valentino Rodriguez started his job at the high-security prison in Sacramento, California, informally known as New Folsom, he thought he was entering a brotherhood of correctional officers.

Five years later, Rodriguez’s sudden death would raise questions from the FBI and his family.

Rodriguez's parents and his widow, Mimy, say Rodriguez was excited about his promotion to an elite unit investigating crimes in the prison. But it’s there where his fellow officers in the unit began to undermine and harass him. Eventually, consumed with stress and fed up with how he was being treated, Rodriguez reached a breaking point. He left the prison, but his experiences there still haunted him—so he went in for a meeting with the warden of New Folsom. He didn’t know it would be his last.

This week on Reveal, we partner with KQED reporters Sukey Lewis and Julie Small and the On Our Watch podcast to explore what this correctional officer’s story shows about how the second-largest prison system in the country is failing to protect the people who live and work inside of it.
Listen to the episode ([link removed])
🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) , Spotify ([link removed]) , iHeartRadio ([link removed]) , Pandora ([link removed]) , or wherever you get your podcasts.


**
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** Al Wants to Hear From You!
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Al Letson, a Black man with glasses wearing a button-down shirt, reads from a script in a recording studio, wearing headphones and speaking into a mic.
In 2025, we will celebrate Reveal’s tenth anniversary of becoming a weekly radio show and podcast. We’d love to celebrate with you by including voices from some of our most loyal listeners in the show.

You can record a message yourself and send it to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]?subject=Reveal%20anniversary%20message) (we can take a voice memo or an attached .aiff, .wav or .mp3 file) or just call (415) 321-1775 and leave a voicemail. Please keep it short and sweet, up to two minutes, and let us know how Reveal has made an impact on your life or community, what it has meant to you, your favorite episode, or anything else you want to tell us.


** Road Trip Listens
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Are you traveling this holiday season? We’ve curated some of our favorite shows and multipart series to inspire, inform, and outrage you throughout your drive or flight time. Click the links to go directly to each episode on the platform of your choice, and travel safe.


** Four hours+ trip
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After Ayotzinapa (three-part series): In 2014, students from a rural college in Mexico came under attack by police. Six people were killed and 43 young men disappeared without a trace. Families suspected the government was hiding the truth. Now, Reveal is exposing corruption at the highest levels and an unsettling connection to America’s war on drugs.
Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])

Mississippi Goddam (seven-part series): Billey Joe Johnson Jr. dreamed of graduating high school, going to college, and one day playing pro football. On a cold December morning in 2008, that future was shattered. His story is a reckoning of justice in America.
Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])

American Rehab (eight-part series): Reveal exposes how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid shadow workforce. This reporting was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])



** Three-hour trip
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40 Acres and a Lie (three-part series): It’s often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But “40 acres and a mule” was more than that. It was real. This three-part series from Reveal and the Center for Public Integrity tells the history of an often-misunderstood government program that gave more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people land titles, only to take the land back, fueling a wealth gap that remains today.

Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora

The COVID Tracking Project (three-part series): This three-part series exposes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s bungled response to COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic and takes listeners inside the massive volunteer effort to collect data about tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the US.

Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])


** Two-hour trip
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Buried Secrets (two-part series): After decades of stripping away Native American identity from its students, a Catholic boarding school seeks to help the community heal. This series was a partnership between Reveal and ICT, formerly known as Indian Country Today.
Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])

Listening to these next two investigations together will deepen your understanding of the risks and consequences for new mothers suspected of drug use:

They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies: Jade Dass began taking medication to treat her addiction to opioids before she became pregnant. After Dass delivered a healthy daughter, the hospital reported her to the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

Even as medications like Suboxone help pregnant women safely treat addiction, taking them can trigger investigations by child welfare agencies that separate mothers from their newborns. Reporter Shoshana Walter, data reporter Melissa Lewis, and a team of Reveal researchers and lawyers put together the first-ever tally of how often women are reported to child welfare agencies for taking prescription drugs during pregnancy.

Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])

She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad. Child Services Took Her Baby: Hospitals across the country routinely drug test people coming in to give birth. But the tests many hospitals use are notoriously imprecise, with false positive rates of up to 50 percent for some drugs. Our collaboration with The Marshall Project investigates why parents across the country are being reported to child protective services over inaccurate pee-in-a-cup drug tests.

Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])


** One-hour trip
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Your Retirement Investments Are Probably Fueling Climate Change: Reveal reporter Jonathan Jones was working on a story about a massive coal plant expansion in Montana when he wondered who was bankrolling the project. It turns out a major shareholder of the energy company driving the project was the Vanguard Group, the investment firm where he happens to have his retirement savings. This discovery put Jones on a quest to find out why Vanguard and other asset managers continue to invest in fossil fuels at a time when we need to burn less oil, gas, and coal.

Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])

The Racist Hoax That Changed Boston: After a pregnant woman’s murder, Boston police rounded up countless Black men in search of her killer. But they were chasing a lie.

Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])

Red, Black, and Blue: Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes spent months on the campaign trail talking to Black voters about how they see the goals and limits of their own political power. He paid special attention to Black Republicans and the new crop of Black supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Apple Podcasts ([link removed]) | Spotify ([link removed]) | iHeartRadio ([link removed]) | Pandora ([link removed])


** A Quote to Remember
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"My heart is beating so fast. I'm sweating...But I keep telling myself, if you're going to have any opportunity to speak to so many women right now in your life, this is it."

In 2022, Keerthana Ramanathan represented Minnesota in a nationwide competition for high school girls that was held just as Roe v. Wade was overturned. When it was her turn to speak, with $40,000 in college scholarship money on the line, she had to decide whether to stay quiet or say what was in her heart.

Listen: 50 States of Mind ([link removed])


** In Case You Missed It
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🎧 Did the US Cause Its Own Border Crisis? ([link removed])

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🎧 In God We Vote ([link removed])

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This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written by Kate Howard and edited by Nikki Frick. If you enjoyed this issue, forward it to a friend ([link removed]) . Have some thoughts? Drop us a line (mailto:[email protected]) with feedback or ideas!

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