So, This is What It's Like to Die

Award-winning journalist Torri Minton had a 16-year career at the San Francisco Chronicle and was a college journalism instructor before her death from cancer in August 2004. While at the Chronicle, Minton specialized in light, amusing features, but also reported major news stories, including the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and Polly Klass’s kidnapping and murder in 1993. She received a National Mental Health Association Gold Award for her reporting on earthquake survivors, and was honored by the Leukemia Society of America for a series on a 5-year-old girl with leukemia. Minton received the 1994 Dart Award Honorable mention for her personal reporting of her sister’s stabbing. Minton left the Chronicle in 2002 to teach journalism classes at the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and Laney College. She was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in April 2004 and died on Aug. 4, 2004.

Deanne Fitzmaurice was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography in 2005. She has been a staff photographer at the San Francisco Chronicle for 16 years. Her work has been published in Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, NY Times Magazine and People Magazine. She has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Press Photographers Association, Best of Photojournalism, Pictures of the Year International, California Press Photographers Association, Atlanta Photojournalism Competition, Mark Twain Award in 2004 and was named the 2002 Photographer of the Year by Bay Area Press Photographers Association. She has been a contract photographer for Day in the Life book projects and is a graduate of the Academy of Art College in San Francisco with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography.