Susan Carroll

1977 - 2024

Susan Carroll
10/04/1977 - 05/27/2024
Susan Carroll did what she wanted to do, even if that meant, as it did in 2007, traveling to one of the most violent countries in the world to track down a notorious gang leader accused of orchestrating a massacre. The 2004 shooting, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, had killed 28 people on a bus right before Christmas.

Susan, a Houston Chronicle immigration reporter, had learned that a leader from a gang now known as MS-13 was last seen boarding a deportation flight from Houston and disappeared soon after. Susan wanted to know what happened. It didn't matter that she was a petite woman, just over 5 feet tall. She was going to get answers.

"She was tiny and spoke Spanish a couple octaves higher than her English and disarmed all these bad guys," said Sharon Steinmann, a Chronicle photographer who traveled with Susan to Honduras. "They had no idea who they were dealing with."

Those who knew Susan knew never to underestimate her.

She was fearless, a tenacious digger, a data nerd, an elegant wordsmith – a journalist who dedicated an entire career to serving as a voice for the vulnerable. She was also a devoted mother and a loyal friend with an easy, infectious laugh who delighted in pranking coworkers and comforted anyone in their time of need.

Susan died suddenly at her Oak Forest home on May 27. She was 46. She is survived by her two sons, the lights of her life, Ollie and Owen, and her beloved parents, Gene and Mimi Carroll – all of Houston.

"I cannot imagine a world without Susan's big smile, her big heart and her bravery as a journalist," said her longtime friend and editor Mizanur Rahman. "But the traits that defined her nearly universally among the people who knew her best or just knew her briefly were her selflessness and empathy."

In Susan's more than 14 years at the Chronicle, she excelled as an immigration reporter, investigative reporter and senior editor for investigations, before moving on to ProPublica and ultimately, senior editor at NBC News Digital.

She guided young reporters through storms – literally. She was a caretaker, a friend, a confidante. Her mission as a journalist was borne of the same heart: She shined a light on what was wrong so she could try to make it right – for immigrant children, for flood victims, for toddlers in the path of a reversing SUV.

Susy's journalism held the powerful accountable and traced the roots of complex problems. She crafted her narratives with compassion and, time and again, climbed inside other people's pain and fear and regret so that she could paint it for readers in graphs that made them feel, understand and even agitate for change.

Her 2013 narrative about a mother who backed over her 4-year-old daughter with a 5,000-pound Ford Expedition puts the reader alongside the grieving parent as she touches the cold concrete of her Kingwood cul-de-sac, "seeing blood stains that had been washed away weeks ago."

"Susan was that rare reporter, someone who could bury herself in a dense spreadsheet, battle bureaucrats over open records requests and write like a poet," said Mizanur, her editor for eight years.

Kate Martin, a reporting colleague at NBC News, described her as an exemplary person and someone who cared deeply about the craft. The two were on a team investigating infant deaths from consumer products.

"Once I had a small breakdown after looking at hundreds of traumatic records, and I told her I felt like I was broken," Kate said. "Susy reassured me and said if I did not have problems looking at those records, it would be a greater cause for concern."

Susan "Susy" Carroll was born in Pasadena, Calif., on Oct. 4, 1977. Her father, Gene, said Susy was shy and quiet until about age 2, at which point "you couldn't get her to shut up."

The family moved to Arizona when she was around age 11. Susy was a gifted writer from an early age and the funniest person in the room, said Ann von Waldenburg, one of Susy's best friends since their freshman year at Chaparral High School in Scottsdale. Her catchphrase "I do what I want," was iconic among friends back then. This spirit of rebelliousness, skepticism and questioning people in power endured all her life.

"We took a Saturday driver's ed class together," Ann recalled, "and the ancient instructor, Mr. Amerson, warned us girls to always wear shoes when driving because women's feet were too weak and delicate to be able to handle pushing the pedals without the support of shoes and so when leaving to go somewhere, we always asked each other, 'Got your shoes for your weak feet?' Even this March when I visited, we went out to dinner, and I asked her before we left, and we laughed our heads off."

At the University of Arizona, Susy found a job at the student newspaper, the Daily Wildcat, as a night production assistant. The job "basically involved running the newspaper through a glue machine and dropping it off with the printer," Susy, a 1999 grad, later told an alumni publication.

"It wasn't glamorous, but it led to my first reporting job in the late 1990s," she added. "I remember sitting at a desk in the old newsroom in the basement of the student union, surrounded by some very smart people, agonizing over my first lede, and eventually my first investigation. I really fell in love with being a reporter while I was at the Wildcat."

When she wasn't toiling in a newsroom or traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border on assignment, Susy could be found, along with her then-husband Brad Hem, cheerleading their sons Ollie and Owen at their baseball, soccer or basketball games. When Ollie hit a walk-off, two-run homerun in extra innings in a 2021 game, she said it was her "new favorite moment in all of baseball."

"Susy lived for her children," her father Gene said.

She chronicled many of her family's adventures on Facebook, such as the time her young boys sold snow cones on the street for a dollar. "The cuteness far outweighs the health code violations," she deadpanned.

Susy's time at the Chronicle, covering everything from hurricanes to mismanagement of the state's $44 billion school endowment, established her reputation as a scrappy shoe-leather reporter and a demanding newsroom leader.

In August 2017, she and reporter Dug Begley were tasked with leading daily coverage of Hurricane Harvey. They arrived at 4 a.m. on a Saturday and spent the next five days working with dozens of staffers to chronicle the devastating storm and its aftermath. Working with Susy, Dug said, was beautiful, chaotic and invigorating.

She'd poke him with a broom when she needed something as she finished a rewrite, or just yell into the mostly empty newsroom, something like "Addicks! Level! Now!" As fast as he could, Dug would yell back a number for the water level at the swelling Addicks Reservoir, as it threatened to flood nearby neighborhoods.

At one point, Susy demanded a night off to be with her boys. Dug drove her home around midnight, then returned to a hotel near the newspaper.

"At 6:55 a.m. my phone rings," he recalled. "Susan has spent most of the night looking at a chemical plant in Crosby that has been sending notices of possible problems related to flooded generators and volatile chemicals. It might explode. So I need to cross town again and get Susan back to the office."

Susy sent Dug down muddy banks in search of exactly where three young men swept into floodwaters were found. She sent him into a hurricane headed straight for Orange, a small city near the Louisiana border.

"I went willingly, and she poked and prodded me and I deserved it," he said. "I keep thinking about the rhythm of her work. How she would cross a flooded city to get back to her kids and cross it again to tell other people they were in danger."

Susy was Emily Foxhall's mentor early in her career.

"I was so excited when we got paired," said Emily, a Chronicle reporter. "I thought she was cool and smart. I was also afraid to talk to her."

Emily said Susy helped boost her confidence as a reporter, and she took the time to listen to her doubts and worries.

"She stayed on the phone with me while I drove, terrified, into the rain to cover Hurricane Harvey," she said. "She built me back up every time."

She encouraged her to write the "weird" narrative stories she relished about turkeys and tigers – then edited them ruthlessly and with love.

Just a few months ago, Susy was still giving her advice: "Fight like hell for what you're passionate about."

Susy had a wicked sense of humor and, as a ringleader of the Chronicle newsroom's birthday prank contingent, she made work feel like a home – and sometimes like a comedy skit.

She once wished reporter Mike Morris a happy 40th birthday with black balloons when he turned 30. She blanketed police reporter Anita Hassan's desk with crime scene caution tape. Her editor, Mizanur, was visited at his cubicle by a creepily costumed pink gorilla.

It was all followed by Susy's "cackling laugh," Dug added. "Not only did she shine light in dark corners for readers, she brought joy to the newsroom."

Former Chronicle education reporter Ericka Mellon said Susy was filled with heart and humor, brains and backbone – but not ego.

"She breathed confidence into colleagues and mentored us to be better," Ericka said. "We started working at the Chronicle around the same time, and she ultimately punked me with perfection - distributing coffee mugs she had made with a photo of my side-ponytailed younger self around the newsroom."

Susy was the first to deeply investigate the abuses of unaccompanied minors in federal detention. As investigations editor, she led a team of reporters probing Texas' failure to prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her Chronicle work led to congressional inquiries and changes in state law and federal policy. Her series on back-over deaths hastened federal law changes requiring backup cameras in cars and trucks.

Before the Chronicle, Susy covered the U.S.-Mexico border at the Arizona Republic and started her career at the Tucson Citizen.

During her time at ProPublica, in 2021, Susy edited projects about Louisiana sheriff's departments, over-policing of schools in the Antelope Valley, north of Los Angeles, and homelessness in San Francisco.

The past few years at NBC she crafted great reads, later picked up by The New York Times, about a cattle-rustling sting in Loving County, Texas. As an editor, she guided ambitious reporting projects on the Maui wildfires, the fights over LGBTQ inclusion in schools, and - in collaboration with ProPublica - abuses of America's child welfare system.

Susy won dozens of journalism awards. She shared recognition from the National Press Foundation and Investigative Reporters and Editors for a 2016 Chronicle series that exposed the dangers of chemical plants and stories about hazardous substances being transported on major southeast Texas thoroughfares. She led a Chronicle team to a Pulitzer Prize-finalist award for Harvey coverage.

Her greatest rewards, however, were her family. She wrote on Facebook how her parents played Pokémon Monopoly countless times with their grandsons after Hurricane Harvey on their 48th wedding anniversary.

Brad, her former husband, said Susy stressed the importance of education to their sons, but her highest priority was deeper.

"What she wished for them more than anything is that they grow up to be kind, compassionate and happy humans," he said. "That was more important to her than success on the sports field or straight A's in the classroom, and she and I could not be more proud of the sweet, thoughtful and loving young men that they are becoming. I know they will always live their lives to make their mom proud."

A memorial service is set for 10:30 a.m. Thursday at St. Stephen's United Methodist Church, 2003 W 43rd Street, Houston. Visit http://youtube.com/stshtx for a livestream of the service. A gathering to celebrate Susy will take place beginning at 2 p.m. Thursday at NettBar Shady Acres, 1717 W. 22nd Street, Houston. To donate to her sons' college funds email dug.begley@houstonchronicle.com. To contribute to a book of memories about Susy, email lomi.kriel@propublica.org.