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Maria Sestito
Senior issues reporter
Maria Sestito is an award winning writer and columnist currently reporting on older adults for The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif. She is a Report for America Corps Member. Before moving to the desert, Maria worked as a reporter and photographer at daily newspapers in North Carolina and Northern California, including as the crime reporter for the Napa Valley Register. She is a "Jersey Girl," Rutgers University graduate, and proud member of the Desert Sun News Guild. She holds a master's in journalism from UC Berkeley, which she earned after already working in journalism for five years. Maria has been a Journalist in Aging Fellow, Age Boom Academy Fellow, Bloomberg-UNC-Berkeley Business Journalism Diversity Fellow, and Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow.
Articles
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How are we supposed to cover the community as a whole when we can’t communicate with a large portion of its residents?
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For years in the western Coachella Valley, residents who don’t speak English have been left out of senior centers — the same places where many older adults go when experiencing isolation, loneliness, and housing, food or income insecurity.
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The pandemic just made these problems worse — and the inequities more glaring.