Featured photo taken by Lavalley's husband, Andy Lavalley.
Growing up north of Chicago, Amy Lavalley, a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune based in Valparaiso, enjoyed reading the Chicago Sun-Times from a young age. She recalled the substantial amount of investigative reporting going on at the time and how intriguing she found it.
Lavalley’s interest in journalism did not stop there. She went on to major in English at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI, and received her master’s in journalism from the University of Iowa. She then worked at a small newspaper called the Pharos-Tribune in Logansport where she met photographer Andy Lavalley, who later became her husband.
“He was a photographer working at the paper and I was a reporter, and we started going on assignments together,” Lavalley said. “Sometimes we would grab a cup of coffee after our assignment. That was how we met, and it was kind of fun.”
After working at the Pharos-Tribune, Lavalley became a reporter at the Springfield News-Leader in Springfield, MO. Two and a half years later, Lavalley and her husband decided they wanted to shorten the nine-hour drive to visit family and moved to Crown Point in 1998. She worked with The Post in Crown Point up until she had her son.
In September 2001 after her son was born, she made the decision to start freelancing, which she felt was the best opportunity for her to continue reporting while raising her son and daughter, who was born shortly afterwards.
“I kept freelancing because when my kids were really little, I was able to do stuff by phone or load them in a stroller to go to community events and family-friendly stuff,” Lavalley said. “As they got older, I was able to change what I was doing and cover meetings in courts and crime. You wouldn’t take little kids to crime scenes or trials.”
When her kids were older, Lavalley started working at the Post-Tribune in Valparaiso and focused on more hard news stories involving the government and elections. She made the switch when she discovered an opportunity to start covering the Porter County government about 10 years ago.
“Although I had covered school boards and city councils throughout my career, this is the longest I’ve covered a single municipal entity, which makes it that much more interesting to see how that all plays out,” she said.
Lavalley appreciates that the city and county are in good shape, and that people constantly work to tackle the issues that do arise. Having a front row seat to the political happenings in Porter County is not the only thing she enjoys about living in the City of Valparaiso. She and her husband had a set of guidelines in place when they decided to move to Valparaiso from Merrillville in 2003, and Valparaiso had hit every mark.
“When we moved to Valparaiso, we had three priorities,” Lavalley said. “One of them was a great downtown, great schools, and a sense of community. Those were the things we were looking for when we moved, and we found all of those things here. Obviously, things change over time, but I would say all three things are still true. I find that it’s a great place to raise your kids.”
When she is not out in the field covering the latest in local politics, Lavalley enjoys trying new recipes, curling up on the couch to watch TV, hanging out with friends, and reading. She enjoys reading a variety of genres, particularly nonfiction and essays. She is currently reading “The Best of Me,” which is a collection of essays by David Sedaris.