She began by questioning the 911 system. Mollo contacted Tazewell County Sheriff Brian Hieatt in 2019, who explained that Richland, Virginia, residents couldn’t call 911 like other county residents. Instead, the local police force was charged with the city’s emergency medical services, meaning all 911 calls had to be transferred and information repeated.

“I know she didn’t like the fact that we would have to switch it over in the middle of the call,”  Heiatt said. “And then she went to the town council meetings, talked to town council people, and I know she went to talk to the police chief that was there at the time.”

There was a lot of resistance to change, and the city tried to discourage Mollo from digging by charging exorbitant amounts for her FOIA requests. This led her to spend over $5,000 on public records requests.

“I believe my town used the cost as a deterrent, but I’m a little bit of a point-prover,” Mollo said. “Whether it was an invoice for 7¢ or $70, every question that I asked, I got charged for.”

Then, Mollo found instances in the city budget where tax dollars were apparently misused.

“The former police chief had signed off on overtime that had not actually been worked and actually signed off on checks to people who didn’t even exist,” Mollo said.

According to an audit by UHY Advisors Tax and Business Consultants, 17 governmental employees had increased their overtime pay by 100% or more yearly from 2020 to 2022. Of the 17, five employees’ approval forms were not submitted or could not be located. For the other 12, UHY found multiple instances from 2021 to 2022 where forms didn’t follow protocols.

However, as Mollo kept digging, the more backlash she received.

“I was being followed,” she said. “There were Facebook pages made about a guy who would follow me through town.”

Eventually, her kids could not go out in town, and they would leave the city for family outings.

The stress took a toll on Mollo, but she would hide it in public.

“I would come home and cry because I felt like if they saw the toll it was taking on me, that they would win,” she said. “And they would get that satisfaction, and that’s how they would come after me harder.”

Still, she kept trying to find ways to fix the problem. According to Mollo, she visited local officials, county officials, state officials and the attorney general. They all told her to vote them out.

However, as Mollo kept requesting public records, the pieces began to fall. In 2021, the mayor resigned, citing a toxic work environment, and three city council members resigned in 2021-2022. Mollo then ran for Richland City Council and won.

Moreover, the remaining city council members from the previous election cycle and the city finance director resigned. Then, the police chief and the town manager were fired.

Now, the city has an entirely new council, including a new mayor, finance director, police chief and town manager.

The city’s forensic audit, which began in 2023, was completed in February 2024 after nearly a year.

“I posted it on Facebook and I didn’t really put an opinion to it,” Mollo said. “But you know, I came home, and I cried with my family. I cried with my husband, and I said, ‘This is it. I was right.’”

The Citizen, under the leadership of Editor-in-Chief Li Khan, her predecessor Shiloh Johnston and current Managing Editor Lylah Schmedel-Permanna, has kept a watchful eye on the taxpayer-funded district, which has a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We’re not afraid to shine a light on the information that our community deserves,” Khan said.

A judge ruled against the city, and Thomas says she never got a clear answer on why the MPD was monitoring her. Law enforcement also was keeping tabs on three other journalists whose names came out during the trial. A police sergeant testified that he used the fake account to monitor protest activity and follow current events connected to Black Lives Matter.

Thomas wrote in a 2020 ProPublica story, “My sin, as best I can figure, was having good sources who were local organizers and activists, including some of the original plaintiffs in the ACLU’s lawsuit against the city.”

Two days after the police sergeant’s testimony, Thomas filed a public records request with the city, asking for all joint intelligence briefings, emails or other documents that referenced her or any of the three other journalists that the MPD was following on social media.

It took 433 days to get the records, and Thomas still does not see what would make the police see her as a threat worthy of surveillance in the name of public safety.

“It’s scary to know the police were watching you, but what’s even more terrifying is the prospect of the government acting in secret,” she said.

We filed a California Public Records Act request immediately after that response and kept researching. We also conducted interviews with students, many of whom rely on water fountains throughout the school day. At a Title I public high school with a majority-minority enrollment, these shut offs were clearly having significant effects.

While we waited on a response to our CPRA request, we attempted to interview school and district officials. All of them, including our principal, ignored or declined interview requests. We also found a 2017 California law requiring school districts to notify parents about lead found in school drinking water at a rate of 15 parts per billion or higher.

We began to write our article, while still waiting on a response to our CPRA request. In early March, we received the information we had asked for — 66 pages of lead testing data from across the district. The data showed that at our school, several of the water fountains had lead levels significantly above the 15 parts per billion threshold. One even tested for lead at 65.3 parts per billion.

We also found, through our CPRA request, that since 2018, more than 500 water fountains across the school district have tested for lead at a rate of 15 parts per billion or higher.

Shortly after receiving the records, we published our article. We are proud that our work did exactly what student reporting should do: hold those in power accountable and increase our community’s awareness of school issues. We couldn’t have done this without the state and federal open government laws that protect the public’s right to access information.