MEMBER SPOTLIGHT | APRIL 2005

Check out Laura Stocker on "Wednesday"

By Jeanene Dunn

Laura Stocker’s journalism career started on the West Coast and brought her to the Midwest where she grew up. “I was born in Ft. Worth, Texas, and raised in Topeka, Kan.,” says Stocker. In more than 20 years, Stocker has covered everything from politics to education — and worked at a battered women’s shelter in Lawrence, Kan.

Stocker took a pause from journalism for four years when she accepted a job as Franklin County program director at Women’s Transitional Care Services in Ottawa, Kan. Ottawa is a rural town south of Lawrence, Kan., where the organization is based.

Everybody practically knows everybody in Franklin County. “It was a real challenge getting women to report abuse,” she says. She encouraged women to contact her agency to get help by designing a unique highway billboard to draw attention to the problem of domestic abuse in Franklin County.

Stocker’s true passion is the written word, and wherever she has relocated during her career, she has sought out professional organizations like AWC. “I’ve always found organizations like AWC helpful in getting to know the area, developing my career and putting me in contact where jobs are.”

When she came back to Kansas City after living in northern California, she found work with Wyandotte West covering the Piper and Kansas City, Kan., school districts as well as Kansas City Kansas Community College and Wyandotte County Parks. She then moved onto the Olathe Daily News, where she covered education. 

Stocker’s currently a staff writer for The Wednesday, a weekly newspaper written about and for the residents of Brookside, Waldo and South Kansas City. The Kansas Press Association, the Concord (Calif.) Status of Women Committee, a standing subcommittee of the Concord Human Relations Commission, and other community organizations have recognized Stocker for her work.