Dave Mitchell became a hero to we young news-sters in 1979 when his tiny weekly newspaper, The Point Reyes Light, took on the “violent drug rehabilitation cult Synanon” and won a Pulitzer Prize.
Dave once worked for the San Francisco Examiner, where I also mainlined ink for a number of years under the management of Will Hearst. Dave, though, was too much of an iconoclast for a corporate newsroom and he eventually returned to the Light, where he continued to afflict the comfortable until he sold the weekly in 2005.
Some years later I also left daily journalism to return to my first love, photography, and when I got the chance to photograph Dave for a regional magazine it was a thrill. I photographed him in 2003 outside his home in Point Reyes Station, California.
Dave called it #30 a few days ago.