She published her first professional newspaper article in 1985 as a high school student in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, an account of a Tu B'Shevat tree planting ceremony for the Detroit Jewish News.

[1] For the latter paper, she earned the Ernie Pyle Award for Human Interest Writing in 1995.

[2] She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her 1996 Baltimore Sun story "The Umpire's Son," about the family of baseball umpire John Hirschbeck, whose son died of adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) in 1993 at age 8.

[4] The Pulitzer citation stated the award was "for her compelling portrait of a baseball umpire who endured the death of a son while knowing that another son suffers from the same deadly genetic disease.

She is currently an independent journalist and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.