Rubén Rosario, New York crime reporter, Pioneer Press columnist and journalism mentor, dies at 70

posted in: News | 0

You can take the boy out of the Bronx, but you can never take the Bronx out of the boy.

Former St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist Rubén Rosario, a tireless advocate for the powerless, grew up in the Bronx and earned his journalism stripes working at the New York Daily News.

Rosario – who moved to Minnesota in 1991 and worked at the Pioneer Press for almost 30 years – died Wednesday morning at the M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis, from complications related to multiple myeloma. He was 70.

Rosario, of Rosemount, was “a real journalist – a shoe-leather, go-to-the-scene, get-on-the-phone, ask-the-questions, check-it-out journalist,” said Mike Burbach, the editor of the Pioneer Press and a longtime friend. “He had plenty of opinions, as a columnist should, but he was a journalist first.”

Rosario specialized in writing about public-safety issues and covered some of the most notorious crime cases in New York City and Minnesota, including high-profile organized-crime trials, subway gunman Bernard Goetz, the Etan Patz disappearance, the Central Park jogger murder and controversial police shootings. He once went undercover inside a drug den, smoked crack and wrote a front-page, first-person account of a drug that was then devastating Harlem and other poor, inner-city neighborhoods during the mid-1980s.

“His sense of justice came through in everything he did,” said U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, who got to know Rosario when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn in the late 1980s. “My rule was if Rubén wanted to interview me or talk to me, I always did it. I admired his hard-hitting, get-to-the-bottom-line approach. There were no frills and no nonsense. Every single interaction I had with him was rewarding.”

After five years as city editor and head of the public-safety team at the Pioneer Press, Rosario became a featured columnist in 1997. His first column was about the unsolved murder of Davisha Brantley Gillum, a 4-year-old girl killed a year earlier in a gang-related drive-by shooting at a gas station on St. Anthony Avenue. More than 2,000 other columns followed, including columns on Jacob Wetterling, the Interstate 35W Bridge collapse, and the beating death of 3-year-old Desi Irving.

“But it’s the columns about lesser-known folks that stick with me,” Rosario wrote in 2020. “I wanted to write a column highlighting unheralded ordinary people and issues that deserved more attention or were simmering under the public radar screen. The last thing I wanted to do as a columnist was sit behind a desk and pen easy cheap shots or witty pontifications. Some do this well. But it’s not in me.”

Rosario wrote in 2013 about Gladys Reyes, the young West St. Paul girl who lost her arm and suffered serious injuries when she was struck and dragged by a hit-and-run driver. “Gladys Reyes chose a pink dress with yellowish and red flame-like streaks at the top of the front for her prom dress,” he wrote. “If there’s a girl anywhere who deserves to wear a pretty dress and look like a princess on this special day, it’s this kid. I remembered the first time I saw her more than six years ago. She was lying on a bed at Regions Hospital’s burn unit, pain etched on her 11-year-old face.”

In 2008, Rosario wrote about the unmarked gravesite containing the bodies of six children, ages 5 to 11, who had been found strangled 10 years earlier in St. Paul after their 24-year-old mother, Khoua Her, called 911 to report she had killed them.

During a time when most of the Twin Cities news media were focused on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Rosario interviewed the man who dug the graves of the three boys and three girls. His first sentence: “Pat Hogan will never forget the day he dug a mass grave wide enough to fit the bodies of six children side by side.”

Rosario believed that the “time-honored purpose of journalism was to ‘Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable,’” said Laura Rosario, his wife of 46 years. “He always wanted to make right what was wrong.”

RELATED: Read more of Rubén Rosario’s columns at twincities.com/author/ruben-rosario.

Jonathan Rosario said his father’s commitment to social justice, racial equality and to the people in his community never faltered – whether he was writing in New York City or the Twin Cities. “He wrote his own story by writing about the lives of others,” he said. “People who would have otherwise gone unknown – blips on the radar of life — he brought to the forefront; he turned the lens of identity into front-page news and a spotlight for the voiceless.”

Former Pioneer Press writer David Hanners said Rosario was “a warrior for all that is good in this world.”

“There are a handful of people who set the standard for courage, nobility, ethics, honor, a sense of justice and a keen way with words,” Hanners said. “He was a rare one. He was a crackerjack reporter and writer who had an eye for great detail and a heart that was alternately big and unsparing. He wrote with a streetwise eloquence. He believed in ex-cons trying to lead new lives, and he had little sympathy for uncaring bureaucrats.”

Proud ‘Nuyorican’

Pioneer Press columnist Rubén Rosario in St. Paul, Jan. 23, 2013. (Ben Garvin / Pioneer Press)

Rosario wrote honestly about his own life, too. In a 2013 Pioneer Press column that ran with the headline “Today, I need to tell you about a little boy,” Rosario wrote about how he was sexually abused as a child by an older cousin.

“He was brave in ways most of us are not — not in the physical courage of the moment, but in the longer-lasting courage of personal revelation,” wrote longtime friend and former Pioneer Press writer and editor Les Suzukamo. “He did it not to win awards but to help people — readers — understand the terrible toll of abuse and how pervasive child abuse is and to maybe show a little more compassion for the victims.”

Rosario, a proud “Nuyorican,” a New Yorker of Puerto Rico descent, quickly embraced life in Minnesota after moving here just one month before the famous Halloween Blizzard of 1991, Suzukamo said.

On the night of the blizzard, which dumped 28.4 inches of snow on the Twin Cities, Rosario was on the job working as an editor, Suzukamo said. “He looked a little shell-shocked,” he said. “He was still going through the culture adjustment of moving from New York City to Lake Wobegon. He was getting razzed a bit by the newsroom locals about whether he was enjoying his first Minnesota ‘winter.’ I remember leaning over to him and whispering something like, ‘Don’t worry. This is unusual. It doesn’t snow like this all the time at Halloween.’ I’m not sure he believed me, but it was one of the few times I’ve ever seen that famous ‘Don’t f— with me; I’m from New York’ face wobble a bit.”

Rosario kept his drawn-out Bronx accent – he answered his newsroom phone, “Row … zarr … reeee-o …,” oftentimes while wearing his New York Yankees ballcap. He also kept his New York attitude, which “he wore like a badge of honor,” Suzukamo said. “He used it like a shield and sword. I think it was one of the reasons why he was so good at developing sources, particularly in law enforcement. He wasn’t intimidated by the cops here. If they pushed on him, he shoved right back. Cops respect strength, and Rubén was strong where it counted.”

Rosario, who was bilingual, often volunteered to translate for other reporters in the newsroom. Former Pioneer Press senior editor Art Coulson said Rosario was once tapped to help cover a story about a local man who had drowned in Puerto Rico.

Related Articles

Local News |


A new multi-sport turf field opens at Jimmy Lee/Oxford Community Center in St. Paul

Local News |


Best Buy to host Geek Squad camp in Roseville

Local News |


Dragon Festival returning to St. Paul’s Lake Phalen this Saturday

Local News |


For all your camel-riding needs: Middle Eastern Festival to take place in West St. Paul on July 13-14

Local News |


Dakota County Board selects first woman to serve in county’s top role

“When the reporter called the police officer on the case, she found that he spoke only Spanish,” he said. “Rubén stepped in and offered to translate. Rubén put the phone on speaker and asked the first question. The officer responded in Spanish and spoke for two or three minutes. Rubén turned to the reporters and editors gathered ‘round and said, deadpan, ‘He says no comment.’”

Rosario dedicated countless volunteer hours to helping young journalists, working as the intern coordinator at the Pioneer Press and volunteering with the ThreeSixty journalism-mentoring program at the University of St. Thomas. One summer Pioneer Press intern said she learned more about reporting from overhearing him than she’d learned in any journalism class.

Rosario was “dedicated to the underdog in a way only the truly strong can be,” Suzukamo said. “He supported underprivileged young people who overcame immense obstacles to chase their dreams and young reporters and interns in journalism. I think he saw a little of himself in them. I hope they see a little of him in themselves going forward.”

Cancer diagnosis

In 2011, Rosario was diagnosed with terminal-stage multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. Long days of “chemo, radiation, and test results that confirmed the incurable nature of his disease” followed the diagnosis, but Rosario’s character shined through, Jonathan Rosario said. “Not once did he complain. Not once did he ask human nature’s usual ‘Why me?’” he said.

In 2020, the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists presented Rosario with a lifetime achievement award. That same year, he published a book of his columns, “Deadline Minnesota.”

Two years later, after more than a decade of hibernation following aggressive chemotherapy, two autologous stem-cell transplants and several hospitalizations to combat pneumonia and other high-risk illnesses, Rosario’s cancer returned. He wrote about the return and his funeral plans in a column published in November 2022.

Left: Rubén Rosario is pictured in 2012 after his initial multiple myeloma diagnosis and treatment. (Ben Garvin / Pioneer Press). Right: Rosario is pictured in November 2022 after a cancer relapse. (Courtesy of Rubén Rosario)

“One of the first things I did was review and update my will, health care directive, beneficiary financial records and cremation/funeral arrangements,” he wrote. “Nothing fancy. My no-frills cherry-red cremation box is patiently waiting in the basement, where it’s been for several years now. My folks will decide service, location and where that box with my ashes will go. The only addendum request was adding two of my favorite pieces of solemn but soul-stirring music — Antonín Dvořák’s New World, Symphony 9, Largo segment, and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. If there’s a celebration-of-life gathering, I hope they also throw in Rubén Blades, El Gran Combo, Santana and Earth, Wind and Fire among others to lighten the service playlist, but that’s up to them.”

Rosario grew up in the Bronx and graduated from Fordham University in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He met his wife, Laura Lemons, in 1975 after he finished working his part-time ushering job at Madison Square Garden. Their first date was going to see “Jaws,” she said.

“I believe it was divine intervention that brought us together,” Laura Rosario said. “We were meant to be together. One of the doctors asked him how long he had been married, and he said, ‘Not long enough.’”

The two eloped on March 10, 1978 – in a City Hall ceremony with a justice of the peace – and then married again six years to the day later at St. Columba Catholic Church in New York.

Rosario worked at the New York Daily News from 1976 to 1991 – the newspaper he’d grown up reading. Among his first jobs: copyboy and mail sorter.

“I worked in the same newsroom for a time with the best of the best, columnists who reported their tales and whom I considered my mentors — Pete Hamill, the late Jimmy Breslin, and Juan Gonzalez,” he wrote. “It was like having Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, on the same team, and I was the ball and bat boy.”

Rosario underwent a CAR T-cell procedure in June, but had complications after the surgery, and entered hospice last week.

Related Articles

Local News |


A ‘second chance’ for St. Paul man sentenced to jail for friend’s fatal overdose in Lake Elmo

Local News |


A new multi-sport turf field opens at Jimmy Lee/Oxford Community Center in St. Paul

Local News |


Dragon Festival returning to St. Paul’s Lake Phalen this Saturday

Local News |


Driver who died in crash that set off fireworks in car ID’d as 22-year-old from St. Paul

Local News |


Amtrak Borealis topped 18,500 passengers between St. Paul and Chicago in first month

Family members “sent him off with so much love and donned him in true New York fashion – literally,” said Danielle Rosario, his daughter. “He was wearing a Yankees jersey and ball cap. He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

In addition to his wife and children, Rosario is survived by his father, Rubén Rosario, and his siblings, Ronald Rivera, Myrna Ortega, Nilda Ferrise and Hector Antonio Rosario.

A Mass of Christian burial will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday, July 18, at the Cathedral of St. Paul, with visitation one hour prior at the Cathedral’s St. Joseph Chapel. Burial will be at Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights.

The Cremation Society of Minnesota is handling arrangements.

Saints surrender 4-0 lead over final three innings, lose to Louisville Bats on walkoff homer

posted in: News | 0

The Louisville Bats scored all their runs in the final three innings, capped by a game-winning homer by Michael Trautwein, to rally for a 6-5 win over the St. Paul Saints on Wednesday in Louisville, Ky.

The Saints led 4-0 entering the bottom of the seventh, getting solo home runs from Yunior Severino, Payton Eeles and Edouard Julien and a run-scoring groundout from DaShawn Keirsey Jr. to back a strong start in a bullpen game.

Scott Blewett, Nick Wittgren and Zack Weiss combined to hold the Bats scoreless on three hits over the first six innings, with eight strikeouts between them.

The Bats started their rally against Josh Winder in the seventh. The first three batters reached base on two singles and a walk, and Tony Kemp, playing in just his second game for the Bats after starting the season with the Saints, drove in a run with a groundout. The Bats added two more against Winder on a P.J. Higgins single and Conner Capel sacrifice fly.

Chris Williams homered for the the Saints in the eighth, but the Bats answered with a run against the Saints’ Matt Bowman off a walk, single and groundout.

In the bottom of the ninth, Saints pitcher Diego Castillo retired the first two Bats batters he faced. He then walked Capel, and Trautwen hit a 94.4 mph fastball to right-center field for the game-winner.

Julien went 3 for 4 with a double, and Anthony Prato was 2 for 3 with his 15th double of the season.

Related Articles

Minnesota Twins |


Saints fall after three rain delays shorten game

Minnesota Twins |


Saints’ Jair Camargo keeps showing his pop with homer in 4-3 win against Gwinnett

Minnesota Twins |


Matt Bowman’s winding baseball journey brings him back to Saints

Minnesota Twins |


Williams hits two homers as Saints get back on track with 11-5 win against Gwinnett

Minnesota Twins |


Saints feeling the roster crunch once again

Faribault man sentenced to nearly 9 years for shooting, wounding Burnsville man he thought was seeing his ex-girlfriend

posted in: Society | 0

A 43-year-old man was sentenced Wednesday to nearly nine years in prison for shooting a Burnsville man he thought was seeing his ex-girlfriend.

The victim told officers he had been sleeping at his home on Nov. 30, 2022, when Ronald Lambert Nielsen entered his house and bedroom, accused him of talking with his ex-girlfriend and shot him in the abdomen and buttocks, according to the Dakota County charges.

Ronald Lambert Nielsen (Courtesy of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office)

Nielsen, of Faribault, Minn., pleaded guilty to first-degree assault on Jan. 9, when a jury trial was set to begin. Attempted murder and illegal possession of a firearm by an ineligible person charges were dismissed at sentencing as part of a plea agreement.

As part of the plea deal, Nielsen faced a prison sentence between just over seven years and nearly 13 years. Judge Ann Offermann gave him eight years and seven months, with credit for 187 days already served in custody.

According to the criminal complaint, the Burnsville man called 911 and said he had just been shot twice and “was bleeding to death.” He told dispatch the shooter left. Before being taken to the hospital, he identified the gunman as Nielsen and said he goes by the name “Barney.”

Officers later spoke with a Faribault woman who said she had left Nielsen several days ago. She said she had received a text message from someone who said Nielsen had shot someone and that she should be careful. She said Nielsen “believes she’s been sleeping with people, has been acting differently the last several months, and that she’s never seen him like this,” the complaint states.

The shooting victim told officers from the hospital he told Nielsen before he fired the shots that he was not seeing the woman. He said Nielsen threatened to “blow your brains out” and shot him twice.

He told police he hadn’t spoken with Nielsen in approximately three months, but had been receiving “nonsense text messages from him,” the complaint states. He said he had dated the woman approximately 13 years ago.

He told officers that doctors had to remove a part of his small intestine, but the bullets missed other organs.

Nielsen was convicted of third-degree assault in Dakota County in March 2005, making him ineligible to possess firearms, court records show.

Related Articles

Crime & Public Safety |


A ‘second chance’ for St. Paul man sentenced to jail for friend’s fatal overdose in Lake Elmo

Crime & Public Safety |


Unlicensed driver charged in fatal Maplewood hit-and-run crash

Crime & Public Safety |


Homicide victim found in his St. Paul home was 37, police say

Crime & Public Safety |


State trooper charged with criminal vehicular homicide in Rochester fatal crash

Crime & Public Safety |


Caregivers arrested on murder charges in Moorhead toddler’s March death

A ‘second chance’ for St. Paul man sentenced to jail for friend’s fatal overdose in Lake Elmo

posted in: News | 0

A 24-year-old St. Paul man who sold fentanyl-laced pills to a friend who then overdosed and died in his Lake Elmo home has been sentenced to a year in jail and seven years of supervised probation.

Dane William Okerstrom pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in April for the death of Vaughn Hugo Wolf on Jan. 7, 2023. The 19-year-old bought two “M30” pills from Okerstrom the night before and died of a fentanyl overdose.

Dane William Okerstrom (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office)

Washington County District Judge Siv Mjanger followed terms of a plea agreement on Monday, which included up to one year in jail and a stayed seven-year presumptive prison sentence. In granting the downward departure from state sentencing guidelines, Mjanger cited Okerstrom’s remorsefulness; amenability to probation and chemical dependency treatment; and that Wolf’s family was in agreement with the departure.

Assistant Washington County Attorney Thomas Frenette successfully argued straight jail time for Okerstrom. “I don’t think that this is a particular case that warrants work release,” he said. “This is a serious offense, and honestly, it was an avoidable offense.”

While noting Okerstrom has successfully completed nearly a year of programming with Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge, Frenette said “this will be the most difficult time for the defendant” in his road to recovery.

Mjanger agreed, saying: “You have a lease on life here. You have an opportunity to not end up like Vaughn. I agree with Mr. Frenette that when our hearing is done today and nobody’s watching … it’s going to be the most difficult time of your life.”

Mjanger added, “It doesn’t make me feel good to put you in jail for a year. But I have a family here who lost their son, and there has to be a sanction. There has to be some kind of punishment that says you cannot do things in this world that take other people’s lives.”

Arrested the same day

According to the criminal complaint, deputies were called to the Lake Elmo home around 1 p.m. Jan. 7 on a report of an unconscious male and found Wolf’s father doing chest compressions on him. Deputies administered a dose of Narcan on Wolf, who did not regain consciousness.

Law enforcement learned what Wolf did the night before. After finishing his shift as a Davanni’s delivery driver, he worked out at the Planet Fitness in Roseville. Just before 10 p.m., he went on Snapchat and arranged to buy two “perks” — or Percocets — from “Dane.”

Wolf went to a friend’s house, where Wolf and another friend “sniffed” the drug. Wolf got home just after midnight.

Deputies found Wolf’s cellphone on a nightstand next to his bed and messages showed the drug transaction with “Dane” happened at the Taco Bell on Larpenteur Avenue in St. Paul. Law enforcement arranged a transaction with Okerstrom at the Taco Bell on Jan. 7 and arrested him. He had a bottle with 50 blue M30 pills.

A search of Okerstrom’s bedroom turned up a 9mm pistol; 13 more M30 pills; 2½ grams of Ketamine in a glass vile; nearly 20½ grams of THC concentrate; and fentanyl test strips.

Okerstrom’s cellphone showed multiple conversations relating to drug transactions between him and Wolf dating back to May 2022, the complaint says.

‘This is your second chance’

Wolf’s family described him in court as someone who was shy, gifted, witty and loved. “And he knew what he wanted, and he wanted to do something great with life,” his brother Ethan Wolf said.

Despite his struggles with addiction, “he was getting better, becoming a man and learning from his failures before his life started,” his brother said.

Regardless of the sentence, he told Okerstrom, “this is your second chance my brother never got.”

Okerstrom told the court that recovering from addiction and removing himself from a “destructive lifestyle” is something that he “should have done long ago.”

“I’m able to look my family and friends in the face now, and tell them that I’m making choices that contribute to a positive impact in the community and to myself,” he continued. “My only regret is that it came at the cost of a dear friend.”

Related Articles

Crime & Public Safety |


Unlicensed driver charged in fatal Maplewood hit-and-run crash

Crime & Public Safety |


Homicide victim found in his St. Paul home was 37, police say

Crime & Public Safety |


State trooper charged with criminal vehicular homicide in Rochester fatal crash

Crime & Public Safety |


Caregivers arrested on murder charges in Moorhead toddler’s March death

Crime & Public Safety |


Minnesota cop helps thwart plot to kidnap, rape and assassinate British TV personality