Today your Lost Coast Outpost is thrilled to launch the Internet’s newest feature: Outpost reporter Jacquelyn Opalach!

Faithful readers will recall that we lost Humboldt County heartthrob Freddy Brewster to higher education a few weeks ago. We put out a call for resumes at that time, and were both thrilled at and actually a little immiserated by the response. We got lots and lots of resumes from lots and lots of very talented, interesting and curious people, and if we could have hired 90 percent of them we would have done so. 

In the end, we landed on an Outpost veteran — Jacquelyn Opalach, former editor-in-chief of the Arcata High Pepperbox, whose stories “The Van: When Religion and Medicine Collide” and “The Epidemic: How Nicotine Infiltrated Teen Culture” you may well remember from these pages.

If this were her perfect 2020, Opalach would be down in the East Bay attending college right now. But, you know — pandemic. Instead, she’s here in Humboldt and ready to put her considerable talent and passion for news to work for her hometown. She wants to write about the Humboldt County education system, mostly, and we could not be more excited to see what she finds.

Enough from me! Take it away, Jacquelyn!

Hi! My name is Jacquelyn Opalach and today I am thrilled to join the Lost Coast Communications team to help bring you your news.

Opalach.

I grew up here in Humboldt County, and it was Arcata High School’s journalism department that first introduced me to reporting. Incidentally, Humboldt County education — everything from K-12 to higher ed to extracurriculars — is what I’m interested in writing about, and as a pretty fresh product of Northern Humboldt’s school system myself, I feel suitably positioned to cover classroom happenings (or lack thereof) around the county.

I’m looking forward to developing my journalistic instincts and trying not to feel too personally offended by what is sure to be some constructive criticism in the comments. Most of all, I’m excited to report for this community. Something I have become particularly invested in is the preservation of small-town journalism — an essential service that is growing weaker across the United States — so I’m grateful to participate and thankful to all who care to tune in.

Despite my eagerness, I don’t have dozens of story ideas lined up yet, so please do feel free to send tips to my new LoCO-branded email account, jacquelyn@lostcoastoutpost.com.

That’s me, Humboldt, and I look forward to working with you.