Spartan Profiles: Alysia Sofios

Compassionate journalism is clearly not an oxymoron, when you consider the reporter who covered a mass murder in Fresno, CA.

In 2004, Marcus Wesson, who held a cult-like control over his family, killed nine of his 18 children—many of whom he had fathered through incestuous relationships. The first to report the story was Alysia Sofios, ’00, then with KMPH, Fox’s affiliate station in Fresno. “I was doing live updates on the radio and on TV,” recalls Sofios, who is now KMPH’s entertainment reporter. “This was the biggest story I had covered.”

It soon dawned on Alysia the degree of horror that was involved. “Three of his children were homeless, had nowhere to go, had no money and were suicidal,” she recalls. So Alysia called shelters and other agencies. “I soon realized that they were not going to get any help,” she says. “So I invited them to stay at my house for a few days. That turned into six years and now they’re part of my family.”

For her act of compassion, Alysia has no regrets. “They are all doing amazingly well,” she says. “They’ve completed high school, gotten fulltime jobs, and are taking college courses.”

Alysia documented her amazing story in Where Hope Begins: One Family’s Journey Out of Tragedy-and the Reporter Who Helped Them Make It (Simon & Schuster, 2009). This past summer, she was featured in an hour-long documentary on ABC about the story. She also returned to MSU during the centennial celebration of the School of Journalism and lectured on journalistic ethics. “The students were fascinated by the story,” says Alysia. “Ironically, when I was a student, I took an ethics course taught by Bonnie Bucqueroux. That really made an impact on me. I just took it to another level.”

A native of Canton, Alysia came from a University of Michigan family but she chose MSU because “MSU’s School of Journalism was accredited.” In July, Simon and Schuster will publish her book in paperback under the title, Deadly Devotion.