In 2017, David Leavitt drove to the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana to adopt a baby girl. A few years later, during an interview with a documentary filmmaker, Leavitt, a wealthy Utah politician, told a startling story about how he went about getting physical custody of that child. 

He describes going to the tribe’s president and offering to use his connections to broker an international sale of the tribe’s buffalo. At the same time, he was asking the president for his blessing to adopt the child.

That video eventually leaked to a local TV station, and the adoption became the subject of a federal investigation into bribery. To others, the adoption story seemed to run afoul of a federal law meant to protect Native children from being removed from their tribes’ care in favor of non-Native families.  

This week on Reveal, reporters Andrew Becker and Bernice Yeung dig into the story of this complicated and controversial adoption, how it circumvented the mission of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and why some of the baby’s Native family and tribe were left feeling that a child was taken from them. 

This episode was produced in collaboration with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in August 2024.

Dig Deeper

Read: “People Say, You Sold Your Baby” (The Cut) 

Read: Forever Home (Mother Jones)

Listen: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl (Radiolab)

Listen: This Land

Credits

Reporters: Andrew Becker and Bernice Yeung | Producer: Ashley Cleek | Editor: Jenny Casas | Fact checkers: Nikki Frick and Kim Freda | Production managers: Steven Rascón and Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Original score and sound design: Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda with help from Aisha Wallace-Palomares | Post-production support: Claire Mullen and Missa Perron | Editorial support: Kate Howard, Adreanna Rodriguez, and David Barstow | Legal review: Victoria Baranetsky and James Chadwick | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson

Support for Reveal is provided by listeners like you, and the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.

Transcript

Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.

Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson.  
Amy Herdy:Yeah, I didn’t sleep last night because I was dreading doing this interview. I don’t insert myself into these stories.  
Al Letson:Amy Herdy is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. She’s comfortable telling stories. She’s not comfortable talking to two reporters from Reveal about a story she’s a part of.  
Amy Herdy:It horrifies me that I have to talk to you. It horrifies me in a lot of levels. It horrifies me that this situation exists. It horrifies me that there’s a little girl, who I don’t know if she’s okay because of how she was acquired.  
Al Letson:The story begins for Amy with a documentary she never finished. Back in 2020, Amy was working on a project that took her to Salt Lake City. After one interview, her source gives her a tip on a sensitive topic; generational trauma, and the removal of Native children from their homes.  
Amy Herdy:He said, “I need to tell you a story that David Leavitt told at a dinner party, and I don’t know if it’s true.”  
Al Letson:At the time, David Leavitt was Utah County’s top prosecutor. The name Leavitt is a big deal in the state. David’s brother, Mike, was a three-term governor, and was high up in George W. Bush’s administration. The Leavitt family founded a multimillion-dollar private insurance company. So when Amy hears David Leavitt’s name, her ears perk up. The source tells her …  
Amy Herdy:He said, “We were all at a dinner party, and David Leavitt was bragging that he had gone to Montana, and had taken a Native baby off of reservation.”  
 And he said, “We don’t know if this story is true or not.”  
Al Letson:A few days later, Amy’s getting ready to leave Utah when she learns David is running for State Attorney General. So she asks for an interview, and he invites her over.  
Amy Herdy:And we walked in the door, and there was a Native American toddler running around. Once I saw the child, it was absolutely a goal to try to extract information from him on how this child had come to be in his home.  
Al Letson:So Amy, and her director of photography set up the interview. It’s long and wide-ranging.  
Amy Herdy:And at one point, the DP walked away to go adjust the lighting and he left the camera rolling, and I started engaging David Leavitt in conversation about the little girl.  
David Leavitt:She’s a sweet girl.  
Amy Herdy:It’s amazing that you rescued her.  
Al Letson:Amy takes an approach that is appeasing, even supportive. She wants to encourage David to keep talking.  
Amy Herdy:I mean, I wince when I hear it, because I was giving him all sorts of positive affirmations for having changed the trajectory of this young girl’s life, I believe, is what I told him.  
David Leavitt:And she’s changing the trajectory of ours.  
Amy Herdy:I was incredulous, really, because this story is … and I don’t know if you’re allowed to say this on radio, the story is bat-(beep) crazy.  
Al Letson:In the end, David Leavitt would formally adopt this little girl. This hour, we’re revisiting a story from reporters, Andrew Becker and Bernice Yeung, in collaboration with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Andrew and Bernice spoke to every party in this adoption, and came away with some fundamental questions.  
 There’s a federal law meant to protect Native children from being taken away from their communities if they are adopted. So how did David show up at the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, and leave with a baby? And how was he able to cut ties between this little girl, her blood relatives, and her tribe? Bernice starts with the rest of this version of David’s adoption story.  
Bernice Yeung:Adoptions are private and the files confidential. The only reason we know this story at all is because of Amy Herdy’s interview with David Leavitt.  
David Leavitt:Two of our seven children were adopted, and five were biological. And we had vowed that we would never adopt a Native American. There’s such a prejudice in the Native community about a non-Native adopting a Native –  
Amy Herdy:Right.  
David Leavitt:… and Native children are controlled by the tribe, by the Indian Child Welfare Act.  
Amy Herdy:Right.  
David Leavitt:And so –  
Amy Herdy:Did you mean to even adopt at all? Were you actively looking to adopt –  
David Leavitt:No.  
Amy Herdy:… and just came across her case?  
David Leavitt:No.  
Amy Herdy:No?  
David Leavitt:It was a Sunday afternoon, and the family got talking, what’s going to happen to … (blank) was her name.  
Bernice Yeung:We are not naming the child to protect her privacy. Here’s the context. David and his wife, Chelom, are visiting her parents on a Sunday afternoon in 2017. His in-laws are talking about their Native foster daughter, Mary. Mary’s own daughter had recently had a baby in Montana. She was having a hard time, and Mary was worried about her daughter, and her new granddaughter. David says in the interview that after this conversation, he and his wife came to the same conclusion. We should adopt this child.  
David Leavitt:And so we said to each other, we will do this on two conditions. Condition number one, is that it can be a complete, straight adoption. Meaning, there’s no possibility of this child being taken from us. And number two, that we walk in the front door of the tribe, and they give us our blessing. And so I flew up to the reservation, and I’m driving from –  
Amy Herdy:Have you ever been there?  
David Leavitt:Never –  
Amy Herdy:Had you ever … Did you know anyone there, or did you have –  
David Leavitt:It was a cold contact.  
Amy Herdy:It was … It was a cold call?  
David Leavitt:And I, when driving from –  
Amy Herdy:Sorry, but –  
David Leavitt:No.  
Amy Herdy:… you’re a tall white guy with blue eyes, and you just –  
David Leavitt:Right. Right. So I’m driving from … I rent a car, and I’m driving from Billings, Montana to Lame Deer, Montana, which is the capital of the Sovereign Nation of the Northern Cheyenne. And I’m thinking to myself, how in the world am I going to –  
Amy Herdy:Do this?  
David Leavitt:… to do this? And –  
Amy Herdy:Pull this off?  
David Leavitt:… I’m thinking, and finally this strategy comes into my head.  
Bernice Yeung:According to David, he goes to see the president of the tribe, a man named Jace Killsback. David says he wants Jace’s support to take the baby from the reservation and adopt her.  
David Leavitt:And I say to him … I said, “I’m here for two reasons.”  
Bernice Yeung:The next thing David does is totally bizarre. First, there’s a bit of a windup. David tells the president a long-winded story that highlights his political connections, namely his friendship with the former President of Ukraine. Then he gets to the point.  
David Leavitt:You’re a sovereign nation, and you have a buffalo herd, and Ukraine is a sovereign nation, and it doesn’t have a buffalo herd, but it wants one. And so I’m here to try and form … see if we can form a bilateral agreement between the people of the Northern Cheyenne, and the people of Ukraine, to introduce buffalo to Western Ukraine. And at that point, he was all ears.  
Bernice Yeung:To be clear, exporting Buffalo to Ukraine is not something that the president of the tribe has authority to do. Treaties between Native tribes and foreign nations are regulated by Congress. And the buffalo herd belongs to the tribe, not the president.  
David Leavitt:And I said, “hat’s the second reason why I’m here. The first reason why I’m here is this. We want to adopt one of your people, my wife and I. She’s running around. She’s a six- month-old baby on this reservation. Don’t know where she is, but we want your blessing, because our commitment to you is, if you let us adopt her, we will treat her when she’s older.”  
Amy Herdy:Yeah.  
David Leavitt:She’ll understand the duty that she has to her people.  
Amy Herdy:Right.  
David Leavitt:And he gave us his blessing to adopt this little girl. And then –  
Amy Herdy:That is a beautiful story.  
David Leavitt:And that started.  
Bernice Yeung:Just on its face, there are things about this story that just sound wrong. Like a buffalo deal wrapped around the adoption of a child, and a tribal president influencing whether or not an adoption goes through.  
Amy Herdy:We ended the interview, and got out of there, and got to the car. And I felt almost immediately that we could not keep this from law enforcement.  
Bernice Yeung:Amy didn’t have all the details, but to her, David’s description of the adoption didn’t seem to follow the Indian Child Welfare Act; ICWA for short. It’s a federal law that protects Native children who are in foster care, or being adopted. Native people fought for decades before it was passed into law almost 50 years ago.  
Judge Bill Thor…:You want the long version or the short version?  
Bernice Yeung:This is Judge Bill Thorne. He’s sitting at his kitchen table in a relaxed polo, offering us breakfast sandwiches from McDonald’s.  
Judge Bill Thor…:I’m a Pomo/Coast Miwok Indian from Northern California. I graduated from Stanford Law School. I have served as a Tribal Court Judge for over 30 tribes in a dozen different states, and then, I’ve just been teaching, and causing trouble since I retired.  
Bernice Yeung:You are going to hear from Judge Thorne a few times this hour, because the story of what happened in this adoption exists in a Venn diagram of tribal, state, and federal law. And Judge Thorne has an intimate knowledge of all three. He also knows a lot about ICWA. How the law was created in response to the tragedy of Native children being forcibly removed from their communities for more than 150 years. First, it was the federal government confining Native children to boarding schools, where they were horribly abused. Almost a thousand children died.  
Judge Bill Thor…:It went to such an extent, and that 19 Hopi men were imprisoned at Alcatraz for objecting to their kids going to the boarding schools.  
Bernice Yeung:Then, in the late ’50s, the government, with the help of agencies and churches, adopted Native kids out to non-Native families. These campaigns of removal and assimilation have traumatized generations.  
Judge Bill Thor…:By taking the kids away from their communities, away from their language, away from their families, and trying to transform them into brown-skinned white people.  
Bernice Yeung:“There are so many stories …” he says, “… of children separated from their parents. Entire villages of children removed. Native communities fought to know what had happened to their children.”  
Judge Bill Thor…:It was that kind of situation that prompted these grandmothers from the upper Midwest to start complaining, and saying, “You’re taking our kids.”  
Bernice Yeung:And eventually, in 1974, about a half dozen parents and grandparents testified in front of the Senate.  
Judge Bill Thor…:And what they found was, that between a quarter and a third of all Indian kids in the country were removed from their families.  
Bernice Yeung:Congress passed ICWA to address the quote, “… alarmingly high rate of Native children who had been wrongfully taken from their homes.” The law is meant to protect Native children, and their relationships with their families and communities. So when a Native child is being adopted, or put in foster care, ICWA requires that the courts prioritize placing the child with their extended family. If no one’s available, then the child should go to another Native family, or a home approved by the tribe. The very last option is placement with a non-Native family, who’s a stranger to the tribe. “The beauty of this law …” Thorne says, “… is that it really takes into account the long-term effects when a child’s cut off from her culture.”  
Judge Bill Thor…:And that’s what ICWA was designed to do, is connect them to family, community, their history. And that’s why I think ICWA is the gold standard for all social work. We ought to be doing this for every kid.  
Bernice Yeung:But there’s a huge gulf between what ought to be, and what is. Even the federal government acknowledges this. The government keeps notoriously poor data on ICWA compliance. So right now, there’s no way to know how well or not ICWA is being applied. We ascribe the general outlines of this story to Judge Thorne.  
Judge Bill Thor…:To me, this seems symptomatic of the pre-ICWA days, where again, the idea was these kids would be better off away from their Indian families.  
Al Letson:In his interview with Amy, David never mentions that this little girl he took off the reservation has a family, and relatives, and they wanted to take care of her.  
 Up next, the family confronts David.  
Darwyn Fishing …:That’s what I want to know. Why? Why should I let my niece be raised by you?  
Al Letson:That’s coming up on Reveal.  
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. In the spring of 2022, Amy Herdy’s interview with David Leavitt was leaked to a local news station in Utah.  
Newsreel:In a Fox 13 news investigation video of Utah County attorney David Leavitt talking about how he adopted a Native American child. He’s accused of-  
Al Letson:One of the people who saw the interview was Mary Grace Medicine Top, the grandmother of the adopted child.  
Mary Grace Medi…:It made me angry that it’s my family.  
Al Letson:Mary’s in her early ’60s, she’s recovering from a stroke, so her speech is a little slurred. Mary has known David for years.  
Mary Grace Medi…:See, David wasn’t saying anything to me about the adoption. Nothing.  
Al Letson:Mary’s connection to David and his family is one piece of the story of this adoption that reporters Andrew Becker and Bernice Young investigated for months. Andrew starts us off with Mary’s story.  
Andrew Becker:Mary Grace Medicine Top grew up speaking only Cheyenne. Her father was a hereditary chief who broke and raised wild horses and made drums and danced traditional warrior dances. He was also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When Mary was around eight years old, she was sent to live with a white Mormon family in Washington state as part of the Indian Student Placement Program.  
Mary Grace Medi…:That placement program, I don’t know if you ever heard of it, where the LDS went in on the reservations and they took some children and took them off the res, and then in the summertime they sent them back home.  
Andrew Becker:From about 1954 to 2000, the LDS church persuaded Native parents to send their kids to so-called foster homes with Mormon families. Many Native parents agreed because they were told their kids would get a better education, but one of the church’s goals was assimilation. 50,000 Native children went through this program and in its first two decades, many kids, including Mary, were baptized as Mormons.  
 Mary was placed with Clyde and Karen Eastwood. They had a big family, seven daughters and a son. Mary lived with her foster family off and on over the next few years, and she stayed close with the Eastwoods. Mary still calls Karen and Clyde Mom and Dad and years later, whenever she had a rough spot, she called the Eastwoods for help.  
Darwyn Fishing …:I was pushing four at the time. My mom did a disappearing act, so she kind of just dropped us off there.  
Andrew Becker:Darwyn Fishinghawk is one of Mary’s sons. He’s a professional chef and a father himself. Darwyn says his mom took him and his brother and sister to live with the Eastwoods when she was struggling with alcohol and substance abuse.  
Darwyn Fishing …:And thank God they’re great people, they could have turned us over to the foster care. They had big hearts and so they took us.  
Andrew Becker:Darwyn says it was a complicated childhood. He and his siblings were moved between several of the family’s households in a handful of states.  
Darwyn Fishing …:There’s some of the daughters that I actually feel close to, I’ll call them my sisters, but I never really had a relationship ever with Chelom other than just in passing.  
Andrew Becker:Chelom is one of the youngest Eastwood daughters and she’s where David Leavitt comes into the picture. The two have been married since the late 1980s. The Eastwood family never legally adopted Darwyn or his siblings.  
Darwyn Fishing …:They wanted my mom to go to treatment, sober up, and just live responsibly and take care of her own responsibility of her children  
Andrew Becker:In the way that trauma cycles through generations, Darwyn sees similarities between what happened with his mom and then with his older sister, Tonah Fishinghawk, the mother of the little girl at the center of this adoption.  
Darwyn Fishing …:So my sister, it’s always an argument. Can’t say there’s all bad. Tonah plays the viola beautifully. My sister’s a classic train ballerina. She can fence. She powwows. So like I said, there’s good and bad.  
Andrew Becker:Tonah is Mary’s only daughter and she has six kids of her own. Tonah has also sometimes struggled to take care of them. Both Darwyn and Mary have helped raise two of her kids. Darwyn started taking care of Tonah’s oldest daughter when she was a baby. In 2016 when Tonah gave birth to her youngest daughter, the baby who would eventually be adopted by the Leavitts, she was also living on the reservation in Montana. She was caring for both her newborn and her toddler and didn’t have a job. Tonah has struggled with alcohol abuse and even though she said she was sober, Mary and Darwyn were worried about her.  
Mary Grace Medi…:I told my daughter, I said, “I’ll take care of them. I’ll take them until you can either sober up and get a good life.” I said, “You’re welcome to have them back.”  
Andrew Becker:Mary says she wanted to take the baby, but she knew she couldn’t wake up multiple times a night to care for an infant. She needed help. So again, Mary went to the Eastwoods. She says in one of those conversations she talked to her foster mom, Karen.  
Mary Grace Medi…:Well, in the process of me telling my mom, I guess my mom brought it up to David and my foster sister Siobhan.  
Andrew Becker:In his interview with Amy Herdy, David says he learned about the situation at a family gathering and soon after went to the reservation and brought the baby home. Through our reporting, we’ve learned that David actually made multiple trips to the reservation over a few weeks. He showed up at Tonah’s door with some groceries, and after a few conversations, Tonah agreed let David adopt her baby.  
 But then around the third week of September 2017, Tonah was arrested on the reservation for an alcohol-related charge. She went to jail. The baby who at that point was almost nine months old, was taken by social workers with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the BIA. Child welfare cases are confidential, so we don’t know everything the BIA did next, but based on court documents and BIA records, we know that David showed up on the reservation soon after Tonah’s arrest and left the reservation with the baby.  
Darwyn Fishing …:Which took us all by surprise because none of us really asked him to adopt the child.  
Andrew Becker:Soon after he got back to Utah with the baby, David stopped by Mary’s house.  
David Leavitt:Tonah calls the shots here.  
Mary Grace Medi…:Tonah can’t call the shots from being in the jailhouse.  
Andrew Becker:This is a recording of that visit that was shared with us. David tells Mary and Darwyn that he’s going to raise Tonah’s youngest child. In fact, he’d like to take all three of her girls because they should be together, but then Darwyn jumps in.  
Darwyn Fishing …:And you have to give us the right first to take care of our family. You cannot just take them from us, is what you are doing. That’s how we see it, David.  
David Leavitt:I understand how you feel. I’m sure that’s a frustrating thing.  
Mary Grace Medi…:Let me ask you one thing. Who are you to come into my house and say what you’re saying? Because for one thing you haven’t been around, you haven’t known what we’ve been up to in our lives.  
Andrew Becker:Mary reminds David that Tonah’s had issues with addiction for years and the family’s been trying to help her. What she doesn’t understand is why he’s getting so involved. David says he’s only involved because when Mary went to the Eastwoods, his in-laws, he got pulled in.  
David Leavitt:I’m 54 years old and have seven children of my own. It’s not like I’m going out and trying to figure out how to get another family, but I’m involved now and I’m involved because you asked me to be involved.  
Mary Grace Medi…:No, I did not ask you. I did not ask you. You guys put yourselves involved.  
David Leavitt:Okay, right. You allowed me to be involved and I’m also involved because by tribal custom and law, I’m Tonah’s uncle and I’m these girls’ great uncle and the Indian Child Welfare Act will recognize my right.  
Andrew Becker:Because Tonah grew up with the Eastwoods, David says he should be considered her uncle and the child’s great uncle. This is an argument he will make again and again.  
Darwyn Fishing …:It’s been years since you even seen any of our family or communicated with us.  
David Leavitt:Darwyn.  
Darwyn Fishing …:No, I’m just letting you know that is thin ice.  
David Leavitt:Darwyn.  
Darwyn Fishing …:You cannot sit there like, “Oh, I’m their great uncle.” No, you haven’t done … for them. You don’t know.  
Andrew Becker:Remember, David’s an attorney. He has money and connections and it’s clear to Darwyn that if there’s a legal battle, David would likely win.  
David Leavitt:You want to take me on this buddy? Be happy to do it.  
Darwyn Fishing …:I’m just telling you how it’s been years.  
David Leavitt:Right. I care about those children. Those children need-  
Darwyn Fishing …:You didn’t know they existed until-  
David Leavitt:So what? Now I do.  
Darwyn Fishing …:So now you care? Now you do because why? Should I let my niece be raised by you?  
David Leavitt:Because I’m a good father.  
Darwyn Fishing …:What connection will you keep with us? This is her culture. This is why it ICWA is created is for cultural reasons.  
David Leavitt:Are you going to let me answer?  
Darwyn Fishing …:Yeah.  
David Leavitt:They’ll continue to be members of the tribe. They’ll be frequent visitors to the reservation. I’ll have a house on the reservation. I respect the northern Cheyenne ways. I’m not here to raise a white person. I’m here to raise a human being that understands her heritage. In fact, I dare say that by the time those girls are raised, they’ll understand their heritage a hell of a lot better than you do.  
Darwyn Fishing …:That’s really, really low.  
David Leavitt:And I’m telling you, we don’t have to be enemies, but if we’re going to be enemies, you go ahead and take me on.  
Andrew Becker:This conversation took place seven years ago. The Leavitts have had Tonah’s daughter ever since, but they haven’t been frequent visitors to the reservation. And the girl has had little contact with Mary and Darwyn. They say they saw her a few times when she was younger. Now the Leavitts don’t let them see her at all. Back in Utah, David and his wife, Chelom, started the formal adoption process. In October 2017, just a few weeks after he left the reservation with the baby, Tonah voluntarily relinquished her parental rights. And then came the question of the father. His name is Gary Valenzuela, and for years he’s been trying to figure out how to be part of his daughter’s life.  
Gary Valenzuela:This all began for me when I was 26 years old.  
Andrew Becker:Gary’s part Chumash, the Native people from what is now California. Gary hasn’t cut his hair for seven years. It’s a marker of his sobriety and when his life totally changed. Gary met Tonah one night in late 2015 when they were both living in Salt Lake City.  
Gary Valenzuela:We spoke all night until the morning and then she was gone. I pretty much just told my friend, “Who was that? Was she real?”  
Andrew Becker:They were together for several months. Tonah even lived with Gary for a while. He remembers the beginning of the relationship like this beautiful dream.  
Gary Valenzuela:She was someone that I could relate to and like I said, I didn’t meet her in daylight and I saw her light shine. I saw her beauty shining.  
Andrew Becker:When Gary and Tonah broke up, she moved into a house with a bunch of roommates, but they still hung out until things ended violently. According to police records, Gary showed up at Tonah’s house in the middle of the night in June 2016. She told him to leave because he was acting strangely and she was scared of him. Hours later, Gary returned, this time with a large knife. He told us he had the knife because he was worried Tonah wasn’t safe where she was living, and he wanted to protect her. Tonah’s roommate confronted Gary and when he didn’t leave, the roommate shot Gary in the face. He was in the hospital for nearly a week and ate through a feeding tube for months. Gary pled guilty to aggravated assault and served a year on probation.  
 Months later, Tonah contacted Gary to tell him that she’d had a baby, a little girl. Gary asked for a DNA test, and when the results came back-  
Gary Valenzuela:It was a moment of complete peace.  
Andrew Becker:As soon as Gary found out about his daughter, he started sending Tonah care packages with diapers, formula baby clothes. He also started paying child support in Montana. Then Tonah dropped out of communication for several months until October 2017 when she texted Gary to say she was in Utah, and-  
Gary Valenzuela:“I think it is best if my uncle adopts …, and it’s best if you consent,” or something to that effect. So my reply to that message was, “If that’s what you’re willing to do, to give our daughter up for adoption, I will raise her.”  
Andrew Becker:By this point, Tonah had already voluntarily given up her parental rights in a Utah court. The little girl had been living with the Leavitts for nearly a month, and David and Chelom had already filed for adoption. In the past seven years, Gary and his mom Terry have gone to tribal court, Utah courts, and even law enforcement to try and get Gary’s daughter back. They’ve made the day long drive to the reservation five times. They’ve talked to social service workers, court clerks, and tribal council members trying to figure out their options. A year after Gary got that text from Tonah, he received a court document. The Leavitts were asking a Utah judge to terminate his parental rights.  
Bill Thorne:And Utah has the most prescriptive rules that I know of in the country for shedding father’s rights.  
Andrew Becker:This is Bill Thorne again. He was a Utah judge for decades. He’s also an adoptive father, and he remembers when the state legislature made it harder for unmarried fathers to intervene in adoptions.  
Bill Thorne:It was clear that it was an adoption industry trying to track more business to Utah by making it easier to clear away fathers.  
Andrew Becker:To have any legal right to his child, an unmarried father like Gary has to jump through a number of administrative hoops, and this has to happen before the birth mother relinquishes her parental rights for adoption. In Gary’s case, he didn’t know that Tonah had given up her rights to the baby until after the fact.  
Bill Thorne:I think children are entitled to their families and if mom doesn’t want to raise the kids, okay, but Dad should have an opportunity in his family to raise those kids.  
Andrew Becker:Under Utah laws. Gary didn’t have an argument against David and Chelom’s move to terminate his parental rights, but since his daughter is northern Cheyenne and Gary is listed as her father on the birth certificate, that shouldn’t have mattered. Under ICWA, Gary should have had a chance to raise his daughter. That’s because ICWA has a high bar for terminating parents’ rights.  
Bill Thorne:ICWA provided a mechanism to judge him to say, “Are you a danger to your children?” And if he didn’t pass muster, then the court’s perfectly free to terminate and to do an adoption. But he’s entitled to have his interests and the child’s interests protected by the federal law.  
Andrew Becker:That didn’t happen. The judge agreed with an argument that the Leavitt’s attorney made based on a controversial Supreme Court ruling from 2013. ICWA doesn’t apply to fathers who’ve never had custody and who’ve said they don’t want to parent their child. This wasn’t the case with Gary, but the judge’s ruling meant Gary didn’t get ICWA’s protections. We’ve talked to legal experts who said Gary’s lawyers could have challenged that argument, but they didn’t. The judge in this case also ruled that Gary had effectively abandoned his daughter even though Tonah had kept her from him. His ruling also notes that he was troubled by Gary’s conviction for aggravated assault. We contacted the judge for comment. He declined to speak with us because of court policy. In the spring of 2020, after two years in court, Gary’s parental rights were terminated. When we described the general terms of this adoption to Thorne, he said that in a case where the father has paid child support and tried to get custody of his child, ICWA should apply. A ruling otherwise is mistaken.  
Bill Thorne:And falls back in that notion of wink, wink, we all know these kids would be better off away from the tribal communities, and I think that’s wrong.  
Andrew Becker:There’s nothing Gary can do now to get custody of his daughter. But here’s the thing. This entire adoption appears to be built on a legal blunder. At the core of ICWA is the idea that tribes should decide child custody cases of their citizens living on their land as this little girl did. Multiple legal experts have told us that this adoption case should have stayed all along with the northern Cheyenne. Gary didn’t know how to process any of this. He’d lost so much. His mom suggested that he keep a journal. At first he says it felt odd.  
Gary Valenzuela:How do you write to a baby? How do you write to a child?  
Andrew Becker:But Gary’s figured it out, and now he says, every night before he goes to sleep, he writes her a note.  
Gary Valenzuela:And it’s the most simple thing sometimes. The weather’s good, God gave us snow today, rain this day. I’m writing to her in a way that when she reads it, she’ll know her father no matter what. She will know me.  
Al Letson:Coming up next, Andrew and Bernice hear from David Leavitt. This is Reveal.  
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. This hour, we’ve been revisiting the story of a powerful former Utah public official adopting a Native child. And after months of digging, reporters Bernice Yeung and Andrew Becker, connected with the people who made this adoption happen. But first, because a big part of the story takes place on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, both reporters went to meet with members of the tribe last spring.  
Bernice Yeung:Are we still en route to the tribal office?  
Al Letson:They wanted to get a better understanding of a curious letter they found in the adoption case file. It was written by the tribal president on official letterhead. I’ll let Bernice and Andrew take it from here.  
Bernice Yeung:This letter would be used by David Leavitt as a hedge against the Indian Child Welfare Act. ICWA prioritizes adopting Native children to family members, so this letter was David’s way of showing the Utah courts that the child should go to him.  
Waylon Rogers:October 12th, 2018.  
Bernice Yeung:We brought the letter to Waylon Rogers, who was a tribal council member when David took the child off the reservation. We asked him to read it aloud.  
Waylon Rogers:To whom it may concern, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe considers David and Chelom Leavitt as the aunt and uncle of Tonah Fishinghawk and the great aunt and great uncle of (beep) under tribal law and customs for all purposes, including for purpose of adoption.  
Bernice Yeung:Again, we’re not naming the child, to protect her privacy. The letter refers to David as the child’s great uncle.  
Waylon Rogers:Yeah. Wow. This should have never been made. I’ve never seen this before. Do you mind if I take a picture?  
Bernice Yeung:The letter is signed by the tribal president at the time, Jace Killsback. Jace is the same person David talked to about that possible buffalo deal with Ukraine.  
Ashley Cleek:Does this mean anything?  
Bernice Yeung:That’s Reveal producer, Ashley Cleek, jumping in.  
Waylon Rogers:Basically, this means that he gave his blessing when he has no right to.  
Ashley Cleek:Is his blessing the same as the tribe’s blessing?  
Waylon Rogers:No. The way the tribe works is the power is with the people. He has his own powers, but giving away a child is not one of them.  
Bernice Yeung:David also used this letter to show a Utah court that he had tribal support. But to the people we showed it to, specifically Northern Cheyenne officials, this letter is meaningless. They remember Jace’s presidency. It was tumultuous. He was impeached, re-elected, and then resigned. On the very last day of his presidency, he signed this letter for David. After he left office, Jace would plead guilty to embezzling around $20,000 from his tribe and the government. Jace declined our requests for an interview, but he sent us written statements.  
 He denies doing anything wrong related to the adoption. He says he was trying to help Tonah Fishinghawk, the mother of the child. But now, Jace says he feels duped by David, and in hindsight, he would’ve done something to prevent the adoption. He told us that David asked him to write the letter and he used language that David suggested. He also said he wasn’t paid for the letter or anything related to the adoption, though he acknowledged that David gave him $500 for his presidential campaign. And as for that buffalo deal, Jace says it never happened, though at the time he believed that David’s offer was legitimate.  
Andrew Becker:A few weeks after we visited the reservation, I reached David Leavitt by phone. He didn’t want to be recorded for broadcast. He said he was worried about how the story would impact his family, but he spoke to me on the record for about two hours. I asked him about his motivations for the adoption and he said they were altruistic. Tonah and her daughter needed help. Legally adopting her child was his solution. David said he was clear about this with Tonah’s mother, Mary Grace Medicine Top, and her brother, Darwyn Fishinghawk, from the beginning. He also told me he regrets bringing up the Buffalo proposal in the same conversation as the adoption. They were two separate unconnected issues.  
 When I told him that legal experts had raised questions about whether this adoption complied with the law, David says he, quote, “followed every paragraph and subparagraph of ICWA.” The process was exhaustive and took two years to move through the Utah court system. He also noted that the tribe never contested the adoption, and that letter from Jace showed he had their support. David says he didn’t dupe Jace, or anyone for that matter. He said, quote, “I’m paying a very steep price for saving a little girl.” He believes the negative media attention on this adoption is part of a political witch hunt against him.  
Bernice Yeung:That witch hunt involves a scandal that’s been a big deal in Utah. Back in 2022, when David was running for reelection as county prosecutor, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office issued a press release about a child sex abuse investigation.  
David Leavitt:There’s substance behind [inaudible 00:05:52].  
Bernice Yeung:The very next day, David called a press conference to deny that he was involved, even though he wasn’t named as a suspect.  
David Leavitt:Yesterday, I was provided a copy of an alleged witness statement.  
Bernice Yeung:This witness statement is about 150 pages long, and it details one woman’s account of repeated sexual abuse decades ago by her parents and nearly a dozen other adults, including David.  
David Leavitt:The allegations that are there are so outlandish and so crazy.  
Bernice Yeung:David’s name also came up as a subject in a federal investigation into the alleged crimes, but he’s never been charged. Then that interview he did with Amy Herdy was leaked and blasted on the local news. David lost his re-election bid.  
Andrew Becker:To be clear, none of the sexual abuse allegations have had anything to do with the child in this story, but federal law enforcement have looked into this adoption. Records we obtained through a FOIA request show that federal investigators had an open case for roughly three years. Their case focused on bribery. They even took it to the grand jury.  
Jesse Laslovich:We looked at the investigation closely and did not identify any violation of federal law based on what was referred to us.  
Andrew Becker:We reached Jesse Laslovich, the US Attorney in Montana, by phone. He was limited in what he could tell us. David hasn’t been charged with any crimes related to that investigation, but investigators’ records show last year prosecutors didn’t decline the case so it can be reopened.  
Jesse Laslovich:That conclusion is subject to change based on any new information that becomes available.  
Andrew Becker:In my conversation with David, he wanted me to know that his adopted daughter won’t lose touch with her culture. But I asked him if maintaining the girl’s connection to her Native heritage is so important, why had he cut off contact with all of the little girl’s biological family? David said he tried to talk to the girl’s father, Gary Valenzuela, about the adoption. He texted, called, and even went by their house, but Gary didn’t respond, so David concluded that Gary was abandoning his daughter. When we asked Gary about this, he said he never contacted David because he didn’t trust his intentions.  
 As for Tonah’s family, David disparaged the character of her mother, Mary, and her brothers. He says keeping the child away from her biological family is his way to protect her. And David says he doesn’t want there to be any confusion about who her family is. Chelom’s sister told us that the little girl is confident and thriving and the Leavitts are doing a great job raising her. She lives in a big house with a trampoline and plays softball. Some of David’s in-laws told us that while it’s none of their business, they don’t agree with the Leavitts keeping the girl from her Native family.  
Bernice Yeung:We wanted to know where Tonah stood on all of this. We found her on Facebook and she agreed to talk.  
Tonah Fishingha…:It was a unique situation and it’s one of those things that I can’t say anything bad about. It’s all done out of love.  
Bernice Yeung:Tonah’s in her early 40s now. She lives in the Midwest and is going back to school to become an addiction counselor. Though Tonah says she’s sober now, she readily admits that she struggled with alcoholism. She told us life with the Leavitts is what she’s dreamed of for her daughter, especially considering how hard things were when she was born. In 2016, Tonah moved from Salt Lake City to the reservation in Montana with her other daughter who was a toddler at the time. It was the middle of winter. She was pregnant  
Tonah Fishingha…:And it’s negative nine degrees at 12 o’clock in the afternoon. I don’t have a job. I don’t really have any way to take care of my baby. So I was just really in a strange place so that I’m really confused and I was really scared.  
Bernice Yeung:A few weeks after moving to the reservation, Tonah gave birth to a baby girl at a nearby hospital.  
Tonah Fishingha…:I felt like a balloon with a string attached to my body. I didn’t know how to feel about my baby. I didn’t know how to feel about my situation and my life.  
Bernice Yeung:The weeks after the birth were a nightmare. Tonah was recovering from a C-section, and a herniated disc made it too painful to pick up her newborn to breastfeed. The floor was too cold for her kids to play on, so Tonah would push them around in a stroller inside the apartment. She didn’t have a crib, so they all slept together on the same mattress. And there were bed bugs in the apartment, so twice Tonah had to get rid of all her furniture.  
Tonah Fishingha…:I felt like it was never ending. The (beep) I was going through was never ending.  
Bernice Yeung:Then her baby daughter got sick. Tonah took her to the hospital. She had pneumonia. The doctor sent her home with a machine to help the baby breathe, and eventually, the baby recovered. But this moment made Tonah question whether she could take care of two children alone.  
 She started to think about options. Even though her mother, Mary, had helped with her kids in the past, the two have a fraught relationship. Tonah, didn’t want to ask her brother, Darwyn, because she’d already asked him to help with her other daughter.  
 When you were thinking about, “How can I get some support for my daughter, going like, ‘Check, check, check.'” And then you got to David and Chelom or how-  
Tonah Fishingha…:My mom had talked to David before and David came to my house and I was just like, “What are you doing here?”  
Bernice Yeung:Tonah says she did have a relationship with the Leavitts growing up and they seem like good people. But when David showed up unannounced at her door, Tonah was surprised. She hadn’t seen him in years.  
Tonah Fishingha…:He had a gallon of orange juice and a gallon of milk in his hand. But I didn’t have any chairs or anything, and he sat down and talked to me.  
Bernice Yeung:Tonah says she’s embarrassed, but David told her he wanted to help. He offered to adopt all three of her daughters, though by that point, Tonah’s two older daughters were staying with her mom in Utah.  
Tonah Fishingha…:And I was like, “No, you can’t take all three of them.” I was like, “No, I’m barely giving you one.” I was really like, “I don’t even know if I want to do that yet.”  
Bernice Yeung:David helped her pay her utility bill and gave her gas money and promised he would continue to help her and her children. And for weeks, David kept asking to adopt Tonah’s youngest daughter.  
Tonah Fishingha…:I would get offended. I would get mad because I’d be like, “Are you saying that my love isn’t good enough? That I don’t love them?” Because that’s how it feels when you’re giving a baby up for adoption.  
Bernice Yeung:Tonah says she finally realized that adoption was the best way to ensure her daughter had a stable life. She talked to her baby about it.  
Ashley Cleek:And I talked to my kids like I’m talking to you. Even as infants, I’ll talk to them like that. So I feel like they can understand. And when I asked her, I was holding her in my hand and I had her up in front of me and I was like, “Do you want to do this? Do you want to go live with them?” And her legs started kicking around and I was like, “Baby, this doesn’t mean that I don’t love you. Don’t ever think that I don’t love you. But we can do this and they’re going to help us and you be a good baby.”  
Bernice Yeung:It’s been seven years since David took physical custody of Tonah’s daughter and five years since the adoption was finalized. Once it was official, David and Chelom gave Tonah’s daughter a new name, printed on a new birth certificate. Tonah asked David to keep her youngest daughter away from her family, but she also hasn’t seen the little girl in years.  
 Instead, she sends traditional beadwork and handmade jewelry to her daughter through David, and he responds with pictures and updates. And as he promised he would, David continues to help Tonah with rent and utilities and school tuition. She’s told me multiple times that this is her choice and she’s grateful for his help.  
Tonah Fishingha…:Eventually, that child will want to know about who I am and whatnot. I don’t feel like I’m a bad person, so I don’t feel like I did it for selfish reasons. I did it for a lot of safety reasons.  
Bernice Yeung:After the adoption, Tonah had a few more rough years. Last summer, after going through rehab, she picked up her two older daughters from Mary. And right now, Tonah and her daughters are together. She says the adoption of her youngest is what it took to get there.  
Tonah Fishingha…:We are still a family, you know what I mean? I still have that connection to her, but I wasn’t meant to be her mother. But she needed to come here to this earth and she gives love and light to their family, and she gave it to our family as well.  
Andrew Becker:But this adoption didn’t sit well with the members of the Northern Cheyenne who we talked to. It goes against the work many of them have done to keep kids connected to the tribe. When we met Waylon Rogers, the tribal council member, we played him part of that interview with Amy Herdy, where David describes how the adoption happened.  
David Leavitt:But we want your blessing because our commitment to you is if you let us adopt her, we will treat her. Once she’s older, she’ll understand the duty that she has to her people.  
Amy Herdy:Right.  
David Leavitt:And he gave us his blessing to adopt this little girl and then-  
Amy Herdy:That is a beautiful story.  
David Leavitt:… that’s her.  
Amy Herdy:That is a beautiful story.  
Bernice Yeung:You’re shaking your head.  
Amy Herdy:Have you had any-  
Waylon Rogers:She’ll be lost. She’s Cheyenne. She’ll grow up and she’ll know something is wrong. They always do.  
Andrew Becker:Waylon looks distraught. He says the loss of a child from the reservation is a collective loss. The Northern Cheyenne have a clear process around adoptions in their legal code. It’s meant to rewrite the legacy of non-Native people taking children from the reservation. If this adoption had stayed on the reservation like it should have, things would’ve gone differently.  
Waylon Rogers:A lot of our land and a lot of our children have been taken. And when they’re taken away, there’s always more problems that come along with that. It’s always traumatizing. They’ll know when they get older.  
Andrew Becker:The promise of equal wasn’t fulfilled in this case, so Waylon and the tribe are left to wonder, “What would this family look like if the Northern Cheyenne had decided this case for themselves?”  
Al Letson:No one knows how often Native children are separated from their communities because of missteps made in ICWA cases, but that’s slowly changing. There’s a new rule that requires states to report ICWA data to the federal government, but it’s still too soon to know how accessible or extensive that data will be.  
 Today’s show is reported by Andrew Becker and Bernice Yeung in collaboration with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Our lead producer for this week’s show is Ashley Cleek. Jenny Casas edited the show. Additional editorial support came from Kate Howard, David Barstow, and Adreanna Rodriguez. Special thanks to the studio staff at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Nikki Frick is our fact-checker. She had help from Kim Freda. Legal review by Victoria Baranetsky and James Chadwick. Our production manager is the great Zulema Cobb.  
 Score and sound design by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs, and Fernando, my man, yo, Arruda. They had help from Aisha Wallace-Palomares. Taki Telonidis is our deputy executive producer, and our executive producer is Brett Myers. Our theme music is by Camorado, Lightning. Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Park Foundation, The Smith Family Foundation, The Hellman Foundation. Support for Reveal is also provided by you, our listeners. Reveal is a co-production of The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Al Letson, and remember, there is always more to the story.  

Ashley Cleek is a producer for Reveal. She helped develop and launch VICE News’ flagship podcast, VICE News Reports. As a reporter, she's worked with This American Life, VICE, NPR and Latino USA. Her work has won a national Edward R. Murrow Award, a Gracie Award, an International Documentary Association Award and a Third Coast award, and she was a 2020 Livingston Award finalist. She has reported stories across the American South, Turkey, Russia and India. Cleek is based in New York.

Jenny Casas is a senior radio editor for Reveal. She was previously a narrative audio producer at the New York Times. Before that, she reported on the ways that cities systematically fail their people, for WNYC Studios, USA Today, City Bureau, and St. Louis Public Radio. Casas is based in Chicago.

Nikki Frick is a copy editor for Reveal. She previously worked as a copy editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and held internships at the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and WashingtonPost.com. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was an American Copy Editors Society Aubespin scholar. Frick is based in Milwaukee.

Claire Mullen worked at The Center for Investigative Reporting until September 2017. is an associate sound designer and audio engineer for Reveal. Before joining Reveal, she was an assistant producer at Radio Ambulante and worked with KALW, KQED, the Association of Independents in Radio and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She studied humanities and media studies at Scripps College.

Missa Perron is the membership manager at the Center for Investigative Reporting. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies, Spanish literature and anthropology from Loyola University Chicago, a digital marketing certificate from General Assembly, and a professional certificate in marketing from UC Berkeley Extension.

Kate Howard is an editorial director at Reveal, based in Louisville, Kentucky. Previously, she was managing editor at the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting and spent nearly 14 years as a reporter before that. She is a member of the board of directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) and Louisville Public Media. Reach her at khoward@revealnews.org.

Victoria Baranetsky is general counsel at the Center for Investigative Reporting (d/b/a Foundation for National Progress), where she advises the organization on its full range of legal activities, including counseling reporters on newsroom matters (newsgathering, libel, privacy, subpoenas), advising the C-level on business matters, and providing legal support to the board. She has litigated on various issues on behalf of the organization, including arguing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to CIR, Victoria worked at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the New York Times. She also clerked on the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals. She holds degrees from Columbia University, Columbia Journalism School, Harvard Law School, and Oxford University. She teaches at Berkeley Law School as an adjunct professor and is a fellow at Columbia’s Tow Center. She is barred in California, New York, and New Jersey.

Steven Rascón is the production manager for Reveal. He has also produced the KQED podcast On Our Watch: New Folsom, a serial investigation into the death of two whistleblowers inside California’s most dangerous prison. Their reporting has aired on NPR stations such as Capital Public Radio, WHYY, and KCRW. He also helped produce the Peabody-nominated Reveal podcast series Mississippi Goddam. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.

Zulema Cobb is an operations and audio production associate for the Center for Investigative Reporting. She is originally from Los Angeles County, where she was raised until moving to Oregon. Her interest in the wellbeing of families and children inspired her to pursue family services at the University of Oregon. Her diverse background includes banking, affordable housing, health care, and education, where she helped develop a mentoring program for students. Cobb is passionate about animals and has fostered and rescued numerous dogs and cats. She frequently volunteers at animal shelters and overseas rescue missions. In her spare time, she channels her creative energy into photography, capturing memories for friends and family. Cobb is based in Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, three kids, three dogs, and cat.

Jim Briggs III is a senior sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. He joined the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2014. Jim and his team shape the sound of the weekly public radio show and podcast through original music, mixing, and editing. In a career devoted to elevating high-impact journalism, Jim’s work in radio, podcasting, and television has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, IRE, Gerald Loeb, and Third Coast awards, as well as a News and Documentary Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Sound. He has lent his ears to a range of podcasts and radio programs including Marketplace, Selected Shorts, Death, Sex & Money, The Longest Shortest Time, NPR’s Ask Me Another, Radiolab, Freakonomics Radio, WNYC’s live music performance show Soundcheck, and The 7 and Field Trip from the Washington Post. His film credits include PBS’s American Experience: Walt Whitman, the 2012 Tea Party documentary Town Hall, and The Supreme Court miniseries. Before that, he worked on albums with artists such as R.E.M., Paul Simon, and Kelly Clarkson at NYC’s legendary Hit Factory Recording Studios. Jim is based in western Massachusetts with his family, cats, and just enough musical instruments to do some damage.

Fernando Arruda is a sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. As a multi-instrumentalist, he contributes to the music, editing, and mixing of the weekly public radio show and podcast. He has held four O-1 visas for individuals with extraordinary abilities. His work has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, Edward R. Murrow, Gerald Loeb, Third Coast, and Association of Music Producers awards, as well as Emmy and Pulitzer nominations. Prior to joining Reveal, Arruda toured internationally as a DJ and taught music technology at Dubspot and ESRA International Film School. He also worked at Antfood, a creative audio studio for media and TV ads, as well as for clients such as Marvel, MasterClass, and Samsung. His credits also include NPR’s 51 Percent; WNYC’s Bad Feminist Happy Hour and its live broadcast of Orson Welles’ The Hitchhiker; Wondery’s Detective Trapp; and MSNBC’s Why Is This Happening?. Arruda releases experimental music under the alias FJAZZ and has performed with jazz, classical, and pop ensembles such as SFJazz Monday Night Band, Art&Sax quartet, Krychek, Dark Inc., and the New York Arabic Orchestra. He holds a master’s degree in film scoring and composition from NYU Steinhardt. Learn more about his work at FernandoArruda.info.

Al Letson is the Peabody Award-winning host of Reveal. Born in New Jersey, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, at age 11 and as a teenager began rapping and producing hip-hop records. By the early 1990s, he had fallen in love with the theater, becoming a local actor and playwright, and soon discovered slam poetry. His day job as a flight attendant allowed him to travel to cities around the country, where he competed in slam poetry contests while sleeping on friends’ couches. In 2000, Letson placed third in the National Poetry Slam and performed on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam, which led him to write and perform one-man shows and even introduce the 2006 NCAA Final Four on CBS.

In Letson’s travels around the country, he realized that the America he was seeing on the news was far different from the one he was experiencing up close. In 2007, he competed in the Public Radio Talent Quest, where he pitched a show called State of the Re:Union that reflected the conversations he was having throughout the US. The show ran for five seasons and won a Peabody Award in 2014. In 2015, Letson helped create and launch Reveal, the nation’s first weekly investigative radio show, which has won two duPont Awards and three Peabody Awards and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice. He has also hosted the podcast Errthang; written and developed several TV shows with major networks, including AMC+’s Moonhaven and Apple TV+’s Monarch; and is currently writing a comic for DC Comics. (He loves comics.) When he’s not working, Letson’s often looking for an impossibly difficult meal to prepare or challenging anyone to name a better album than Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides.