SNOHOMISH — The Tribune has lost one of its brightest journalists.
Angela Cooper-McCorkle passed to illness on Sunday, May 12, Mother’s Day.
She was 42.
Her husband Jeff McCorkle said she went peacefully. Their daughter and other family members were at her side at the time of her death.
Cooper-McCorkle’s dream was to work in a newsroom.
She was a compassionate journalist who supported human rights. She considered telling people’s stories such as in the annual Point in Time homeless count and Project Homeless Connect among her favorite assignments, because it let her amplify “the voices of the voiceless,” which is one of journalism’s paradigms.
Cooper-McCorkle conceived and spearheaded a number of stories beyond her everyday reporter’s beat. She dug into affordable housing, crunched data to illuminate youth homelessness and scoured her home city of Everett cataloging condemned properties with site visits.
She was an incredibly intelligent and thoughtful individual, and a meticulous wordsmith.
She referred to her formative time in San Francisco fondly, and once quipped it helped shape her worldview.
Angela joined the Tribune as a contributing freelance
journalist in 2015. When a reporting position became vacant at this paper in early 2018, the unanimous decision in the newsroom was to offer her the job.
A sudden illness hospitalized Cooper-McCorkle in early April. She did not recover.
Cooper-McCorkle came to journalism well into adulthood. She worked at Everett Community College’s The Clipper and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from National University, an online school for adult learners. She listed that she graduated summa cum laude.
Earlier in life, she worked in loss prevention investigations and audits at Nordstrom.
Some of Angela's largest stories, and favorites:
A profile on a neighborhood market
A look at homeless students, digging into data school district by school district
An investigation on condemned properties in Everett
A look into affordable housing countywide
A chat with a graphic novel and comic character designer
