Summer Lin is a breaking news reporter for The Los Angeles Times based out of Los Angeles, Calif.
I’m currently covering general assignment, housing, homelessness, criminal justice, politics, business and natural disasters, among other topics, across Southern California and beyond. Highlights include stories on a Virginia sheriff’s deputy who killed a Riverside family and kidnapped a teenager, the L.A. City Council leaked tape scandal and college campus demonstrations against the ongoing war in Gaza.
I covered the Monterey Park mass shooting, which was recognized in May 2024 as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in breaking news.
Before coming to The Times, I was a breaking news reporter for The Mercury News. I wrote stories on misconduct within the San Jose Police Department, a feature on a baby kidnapping and child exorcism death being linked to a small San Jose church and an investigation into Palo Alto-based animal shelter Pets in Need.
I’ve also reported on breaking news and politics for McClatchy’s 30+ publications as a member of the national real-time team, writing about presidential elections and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. My work has appeared in Vice, Refinery29, Elle Magazine and Bustle News. An East coast native, I graduated from Boston College with an English degree and have a Master's degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
When I’m not out reporting, I enjoy exploring L.A. with my dog, concerts, trying to find the best taco truck and going on the occasional hike.
Recent Work
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Three Los Angeles City Council members went to a squat office building near MacArthur Park last October to seek advice from an influential labor leader about solidifying their grip on power.
The strategy session was supposed to be a discreet backroom conversation, but as it got underway in a private room at the headquarters of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, someone was recording it.
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To co-workers who knew David DePape a few years ago, he was a gentle, quiet carpenter who liked to watch the “Game of Thrones” and “Stranger Things” series and brought sunflower seeds to his work site to feed birds and squirrels.
“Everybody liked him,” said Frank Ciccarelli, 76, a carpenter who employed DePape in the Bay Area.
But when DePape began talking about politics, his outlook grew darker, they said.
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Co-workers of Austin Lee Edwards, the Virginia deputy who killed the grandparents and mother of a 15-year-old Riverside girl he “catfished” online, removed a sheriff’s truck and a black trash bag from Edwards’ property the night before it was officially searched, according to a witness and a video reviewed by The Times.
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A small, nondescript church in San Jose has emerged as a connecting thread between last month’s kidnapping of a San Jose infant and an alleged exorcism that killed a 3-year-old girl, whose September death has been ruled a homicide.
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A San Jose police officer being prosecuted on allegations he masturbated in front of a family while responding to a call last month was the subject of a sexual assault investigation last year after he was accused of drunkenly groping a woman at a party at the home of another police officer, according to authorities and the woman.
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As the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office continues to investigate the deaths of seven puppies while being transported by a Pets in Need animal shelter in Palo Alto in early August, employees are alleging a series of mistakes caused the tragedy.
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Public schools throughout the Bay Area are grappling with a spike in teacher absences and vacancies as schools have reopened, leading them to increase pay for subs, offer signing bonuses for new hires and ask other school and district staff members to take over classes.
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They started lining up in the cold and darkness before 2 a.m., hours before the doors opened. But they weren’t there for a concert. They were hoping to get a seat on the wooden benches inside the federal courthouse in San Jose to see the now-disgraced Elizabeth Holmes, be cross-examined by prosecutors in her criminal trial.
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Thanks to New York's Child Victims Act, a post-MeToo law that went into effect in August, survivors of crimes for which the statute of limitations expired have a one-year window to sue institutions accused of negligence.