Julia O'Malley writes a general interest column about life and politics in Anchorage and around Alaska. She grew up in Anchorage and has worked at the ADN on and off as a columnist and reporter since 1996. She came back full time as a reporter in 2005.
As a reporter, she covered the court system and wrote extensively about life in Anchorage, including big changes in the city's ethnic and minority communities.
In 2008, she won the Scripps-Howard Foundation's Ernie Pyle award for the best human-interest writing in America. She has also written for the Oregonian, the Juneau Empire and the Anchorage Press.
E-mail her at jomalley@adn.com.
Sand Lake beagle found, maybe. - 11/18/2009 11:44 am
Inside every sad story are a dozen more - 11/17/2009 6:49 pm
Think you were drugged? APD wants your story - 11/17/2009 11:22 am
Women need to watch their drinks -- and their drinking - 11/15/2009 9:16 pm
On the trailside, a sign of a lonesome life - 11/14/2009 10:31 pm
Have you seen Willie? - 11/13/2009 1:44 pm
More from the Army on John Mayo - 11/13/2009 10:45 am
A stranger's quilts and question marks - 11/10/2009 8:35 pm
Pigeon love means war in Spenard - 11/4/2009 9:12 pm
What the heck is this? - 11/3/2009 1:31 pm
Chasing the mystery beagle of Sand Lake - 10/30/2009 10:24 pm
A fire chief should know engines don't do errands - 10/24/2009 2:42 pm
Senior citizen feeding pigeons in Spenard = $310 fine - 10/23/2009 11:28 am
Mailbag: responses to Purple Heart column - 10/23/2009 11:13 am
Alaska Native youth: future talk and street fashion - 10/20/2009 7:09 pm
Behind Purple Heart, medical hassle and heartache - 10/19/2009 8:48 pm
Homeless plan should include Housing First - 10/10/2009 7:44 pm
Money worries on the day money comes free - 10/8/2009 9:54 pm
FB Fav: dance-off at the Northway Mall - 10/6/2009 11:05 am
After sneeze-fest, it's time to confront flu-shot fears - 10/3/2009 1:16 am
Local response to disasters in Samoa and the Phillipines - 9/30/2009 4:42 pm
On this day, a cell phone ring in church is welcome - 9/29/2009 8:54 pm
NOVEMBER 18, 2009 - 11:44 AM
I got this e-mail this morning from Barbara Carlson, with Friends of the Anchorage Wildlife Refuge, related to my column from a few weeks ago about the a mystery beagle waking residents in Sand Lake.
Hi Julia--I thought folks might like to know that FAR got an anonymous call recently giving us the location of the beagle's owner. The beagle had been spotted loose in the ACWR yet again. Anchorage Animal Care and Control visited the owner who admitted that their beagle was getting out often. Animal Control is working with them to help resolve the problem.
NOVEMBER 17, 2009 - 6:49 PM
Sometimes one story can have a dozen smaller stories tucked inside it. When I checked my e-mail Monday morning, I saw I was wrapped up in a story just like that.
The message in my inbox was from a man who said he read a column I wrote Sunday about his longtime companion, Nora Jean York. York was shot to death Saturday by Alaska State Troopers after a standoff at their home in Wasilla. He asked me to call him.
"I just didn't want her last time on the Earth to go down as just a crazy person with a gun," he told me over the phone. "There was a person behind it, and pain."
NOVEMBER 17, 2009 - 11:22 AM
I'm still perplexed by the issues in yesterday's column about whether women are being drugged at bars. It's very hard to find solid evidence. Some women are pretty intoxicated from drinking at the point they say they have been drugged. And the motive, if not sexual assault, is unclear.
But the stories keep coming to me.
Yesterday I had three emails from women who said they were drugged recently at downtown bars. None of them were assaulted. Their ages spanned the gamut, and all of them said they had only had a few drinks. Here's one, from a 31-year-old woman:
NOVEMBER 15, 2009 - 9:16 PM
Update 11/17: Think you were drugged? APD wants to hear about it. Find APD contact info and responses to this column here .
A 26-year-old student e-mailed to say she had been drugged in the fall. She said she went out with six friends. They split three pitchers of beer. All her friends left except for one. She ordered another drink before heading to the dance floor. A little later, she started to feel sick. She told her friend they needed to go home. The last thing she remembers is walking down the sidewalk on Fourth Avenue.
NOVEMBER 14, 2009 - 10:31 PM
Trailside cross: A cross along the Coastal Trail near Westchester Lagoon reads "Nora Jean York, 1951-2009, ALONE" on the bottom hand written sign. (MARC LESTER / Anchorage Daily News)
You could miss the worn cross along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail, just on the other side of the tunnel near Westchester Lagoon. I did for years even though it's on my running route.
It sits at the head of a small rock-covered mound on the other side of a chain-link fence near a city sewer building. It carries three names. The first two seem like pets: "Missy, 1977-1992, Gone but not forgotten;" "Missy Too, 1996-2009, a special baby, RIP."
NOVEMBER 13, 2009 - 1:44 PM
For the last week or so I have been following this blogger who has been looking for a lost dog in Anchorage. Willie, a sheltie, vanished two weeks ago, and she's been trying everything, including a psychic, to find him. The Web site is impressive.
It has an ongoing blog, a map of sightings and a place to give donations for a reward. 
NOVEMBER 13, 2009 - 10:45 AM
A few weeks ago, I received a package from the Army in response to a freedom of information request related to the case of John Mayo, a soldier who was discharged from the Army after a shoplifting incident that I wrote about in September.
There have been a lot of questions about his discharge from the Army after a shoplifting incident, and some of the documents that came from the Army shed more light on what led happened.
The packet included a psychological evaluation made for the defense in his case that says that Mayo was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the incident, but that he still understood right from wrong:
NOVEMBER 10, 2009 - 8:35 PM
Quilting estate: Maxine Holliday, left, and her daughter Angela Lewis helped with Barbara Norton's estate. The two women are now finishing many of the quilts that Norton left behind. (MARC LESTER / Anchorage Daily News)Barbara Norton kept to herself, living alone on a her small retirement in an apartment in Fairview. Late in the summer of 2008, she died suddenly at her sewing machine. She was 61.
Anchorage police set about searching for her family. While at her apartment, APD chaplain Bert McQueen noticed there was very little furniture, but it was full of quilts. All waiting to be finished.
NOVEMBER 4, 2009 - 9:12 PM
The lineup: Pigeons line the roof of Marie Wolfe's photography business in Midtown in late October. (MARC LESTER / Anchorage Daily News)
There could be 100 pigeons in the Spenard flock, maybe more. Most days, they perch on the necks of street lights over Benson Boulevard. The birds, like many things in the neighborhood, have been around. They've fought gulls for parking-lot french fries and been attacked by hawks and laid eggs in February. They have missing eyes and tatty feathers and gimpy feet.
Marie Wolfe, an older woman who owns Anchorage Photos, fell in love with the flock a long time ago. For a number of years, she fed the birds daily in the driveway of her shop on Photo Avenue. And over that time, they multiplied. And her roof became a significant pigeon haunt.
NOVEMBER 3, 2009 - 1:31 PM
(Photo by Erik Hill)
UPDATE: It's not a sewage plug or an airplane part. It is, we think, a "snubber." This confirmation from a savvy FB friend:
"I crawled under Brownie (our pickup). It's got snubbers like that on the front end, above the front axle. Is the inside of the hole tapped, like so it would screw onto a bolt? The numbers stamped on the side would be the parts number, so the guy at the dealership can look up the part to sell you a new one, when your old one ended up on someone's lawn."
OCTOBER 30, 2009 - 10:24 PM
MARC LESTER / Anchorage Daily News: Barbara Carlson says she frequently hears a baying beagle in the middle of the night from her home along the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge.
For the past year or so, late on certain nights on the southernmost edge of the Sand Lake neighborhood, where Dimond Boulevard thins and the houses perch on the bluff above the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, residents have been waking in the dark to a horrible sound.
It comes from the mud flats, through the wind-twisted trees. Not quite a howl. Or a bark. Or a shriek. But a pained combination of all three. An undulating yowl that carries for miles.
OCTOBER 24, 2009 - 2:42 PM
An Anchorage Fire Department engine, staffed with three or four on-duty firefighters, rolled up to Dimond High School on Monday afternoon. But it wasn’t there for a fire.
It was there at the request of Fire Chief Mark Hall to pick up his 15-year-old daughter and take her home from school.
The firefighters drove her about two miles and dropped her off. And the chief was not inconvenienced. And some time later the chief’s wife, in a fire department thank-you tradition, showed up at Station 7 in Jewel Lake with sundae fixings.
But this wasn’t your average fire department ice cream situation.
OCTOBER 23, 2009 - 11:28 AM
This from yesterday's Alaska State Trooper log:
"Location: Anchorage
Case number: 09-93942
Type: Feeding Game
Text: On 10/17/09, Alaska Wildlife Troopers contacted Marie L. Wolfe, 71
yoa Anchorage, on Photo Avenue in Anchorage. Wolfe was observed feeding
Pigeons in a driveway after being informed by ADF&G that it was illegal.
Wolfe was issued a USC with a bail amount of $310.00 for Feeding Game.
Arraignment was set for Anchorage District Court."
OCTOBER 23, 2009 - 11:13 AM
“ I read with interest your column where the military health care including Tricare was blasted something terrible. I think you owe it to your readers to present a balanced view and at least let those of us who have had nothing but outstanding experiences with this system. I have been dealing with extreme health care issues for the last couple of years and I have received nothing but the absolute best in doctors, facilities, prescriptions, etc.. I am sure that when some of the local doctors read your column they are ready to throw in the towel and deny Tricare which would be a major disaster.”
OCTOBER 20, 2009 - 7:09 PM
Photographer Marc Lester and I spent the day at the First Alaskans Youth & Elders Conference talking with teenagers. Click here to view what we made.
OCTOBER 19, 2009 - 8:48 PM
Family talk: Sgt. 1st Class Michael Waszak and his wife, Karen, discuss what life has been like since he was injured in combat in Iraq in 2004. Waszak has undergone numerous surgeries and deals with complicated pain management and the effects of post-traumatic stress. (MARC LESTER / Anchorage Daily News)
UPDATE 10/23: To read some responses to this column, click here.
The Purple Heart ceremony on Fort Richardson a week ago began with the usual formality. Lines of uniformed soldiers took seats in the mess hall before a podium and a row of official flags. We stood to welcome the VIPs -- including Maj. Gen. William Troy, head of the U.S. Army in Alaska, and U.S. Sen. Mark Begich -- and then we sat again when we were told.
OCTOBER 10, 2009 - 7:44 PM
Street sleeper: John Martin prepares for another night out on the corner of Lake Otis Parkway and Abbott Road Oct. 4. Martin had been camped out on the street corner since the morning of Sept. 30 in an effort to bring attention to the homeless situation in Anchorage. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)
Audio slide show: Martin's protest on the streets
John Martin has his own problems, a large one being that he's a registered sex offender, but for four days before anyone reported that fact, he put on a one-man public demonstration about homelessness at the corner of Lake Otis Parkway and Abbott Road.
OCTOBER 8, 2009 - 9:54 PM
I don’t know what it looked like at Best Buy or Costco or Target, but the line at the PFD office on 7th Avenue Thursday morning wasn’t too long. Most of the dozen or so people waiting in the drizzle for the doors to open had been to the bank already and discovered their PFD checks — $1,305 each — hadn’t been deposited. Faces were grim under hoods. They pulled on their sleeves to cover cold hands.
It was my second year in the line. This year I was writing about it. Last year, my Social Security number was wrong on my application. I had waited with a guy who had a long, emotional story about how his ex-wife might have purposely not mailed his application, so he shouldn’t be held responsible for the fact it didn’t get there by the deadline. Behind us, there had been a guy who lost his check because he owed money, which he didn’t think he owed. And behind him, there was a family of 10 from Vietnam who were expecting to collect enough for a down payment on a house, if only all of the checks would make it to their accounts.
OCTOBER 6, 2009 - 11:05 AM
My favorite thing on Facebook this morning were clips from Mao Tosi of AK Pride kids signing and dancing, including this breakdance-off at the Northway Mall. Don't miss the last guy with the yoga moves.
OCTOBER 3, 2009 - 1:16 AM
For most of my life, I have been one of those people who doesn't get a flu shot. The phobia started years ago when I was working on a story about a retiring mail carrier. We spent a morning walking his route through a neighborhood in North Portland and he told me about his life. His mother had problems from Guillain-Barre syndrome, which crippled her. He told me he suspected it had something to do with her getting a flu shot months before coming down with symptoms in the 1970s. He'd spent several decades caring for her and never married.
Somewhere I'd also heard that shot could make you sick, which seemed highly inconvenient. And, even though my dad is a doctor who gets a flu shot every year, I had a hazy distrust about anything that came from pharmaceutical companies and was distributed from the government. Plus, who likes getting a shot? So I went through my 20s shot-free.
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