"Here's a woman, age 75, traveling alone without a cell phone, with only two bags, a computer, on a budget, and who stays in homes of people she doesn't know, who goes whichever way the wind happens to be blowing, and she's sitting right here in front of us"
As a columnist and photojournalist, Laureen Diephof reported on breaking news stories for South County News agency, which included four newspapers: Greenfield News, King City Rustler, Soledad Bee and Gonzales Tribune. She also wrote the columns, "Reporters Notebook", "Tropics and Topics" and "The View from Here".
For five of those years, she was the sole reporter for Soledad Bee and Gonzales Tribune. Laureen also published stories for the newspapers, www.amcostarica.com, Pacifica Tribune, The Indian Ute Drum, Aptos Voice, Watsonville Pajaronian, Going Dutch magazine, published in Den Haag, Holland, and Pine River Times, Bayfield, Colorado, and for the on-line publication, www.benitolink.org.
When Laureen returned back from her one-year journey around the world, she joined AmeriCorps and worked as the volunteer coordinator for the Arts Council for Monterey County. She used the earned stipend in Cambodia, where she resided on a Buddhist Pagoda with Buddhist Monks and Nuns.
She became a feature writer for the Salinas Californian newspaper. One of those stories, "Sisters give birth two minutes apart", was picked up and published by, USA Today, and the Disney blog, www.babble.com.
She participated in 2016, John Steinbeck Library's, "Trailblazing Women's Series," and was featured on KSBW TV news, Icelandic National Television and a Cambodian Radio talk show. Laureen holds a private pilots license.
