Hi, welcome to my page!
I'm a print and broadcast journalist based in the Washington, D.C., area. My core topics are mental health, social justice, and animal welfare. I love engaging with people who make a difference, whether inadvertently or via original purpose. I try to approach news events from a human perspective with the goal of reaching communal understanding and support.
With 1,400+ bylined pieces, my writing has appeared in People magazine, the Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, the Today Show, and O magazine. Among many significant events, I've covered the Abu Ghraib prison abuse; 9/11; the 2010 Haiti earthquake; the Charleston church, Virginia Tech, Uvalde, and Texas camp flood tragedies; the Altadena, Calif., fires; the killing of George Floyd; and the inaugurations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
As the American field producer for several Scandinavian public TV broadcasters, I contribute to stories and docs that bring trending U.S. news to Europe with features on politics, business, climate, and culture.
My first book -- Full of Heart, with J.R. Martinez -- was a New York Times bestseller. I'm a member of the Washington Post Talent Network. My awards include the Dateline Award for Excellence in Journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Health Writing Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. I'm represented by Robert Guinsler of Sterling Lord Literistic, New York.
Oh, and I love travel and pitbulls. Looking for a rescue puppy? I can help!
alexafleming@gmail.com
Shana Chappell's husband "taught me I'm allowed to live," she says, after one of the hardest times in her life: the death of son Kareem Nikoui, a Marine, in Afghanistan and the suicide of his brother, Dakota Halverson
When Mike Tabura shipped off to Iraq in 2004 with the Marines, he called his wife to announce his safe arrival. Instead, she interrupted: "I'm pregnant!" Tabura was 26 and soon deployed for Operation Phantom Fury in the bloody second battle of Fallujah
Marine Corps mom Sharon McLeese heard repeatedly about "ultimate sacrifice" while attending son Justin's 2004 graduation from boot camp. Within months, he would be killed in the second battle of Fallujah and she had to learn to keep his memory alive
"I'll never forget it," says retired Marine Justin Rettenberger of his first day in Operation Vigilant Resolve in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004
Skater Maxim Naumov, who lost his parents Evgenia Shiskova and Vadim Naumov in the American Airlines plane crash, broke down in tears after honoring them at the 'Legacy on Ice' event on March 2.
Christopher Collins, one of the 67 victims of the D.C. plane crash, is being remembered for his gentle touch with dogs in need of a new home.
Eric Nickerson tells PEOPLE about the final time he spoke with his 82-year-old dad, Rodney Nickerson, who was found dead in his bed inside his Altadena home amid the ongoing wildfires in the Los Angeles area
Vicious drafts of desert-hot Santa Ana winds fed the fast-moving firestorm in L.A.'s worst wildfires, which in mere hours roared over mountaintops, through canyons and into city neighborhoods: Here, survivors speak out
Carol Smith remembers the last-ever phone conversation she had with her son, Randall 'Randy' Miod, a 55-year-old Malibu, Calif., resident.
Since Jan. 7, Jacob Deutsch has helped rescue over 90 animals, mostly horses and livestock, from the ongoing L.A. wildfires using his 55-foot-long horse trailer.
Theresa Harmon calls herself an advocate for the unseen: In 2017, she started To the Moon and Back to fight for the growing group of children and young adults nationwide with neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS
Anna Chagnon and her husband Mike adopted children Julianna and Nicky as infants - and the parents tell PEOPLE they're proud of their achievements in the face of adversity.
Sophie Perry-Stewart, now 23, tells PEOPLE that her neonatal abstinence syndrome symptoms persist, but she's been able to form a safe space for herself.
Wahid Leeman, who has neonatal abstinence syndrome, is determined to make a difference.
After Laura Beck's 18-month-old son died in a hot car - like dozens of other kids each year - her husband blamed himself and then died by suicide. Now she fights to protect other families.
"I think we lost a great community member," friend Randy Reamer tells PEOPLE. "If you needed something, he was there for you."
Cayleigh Aslanian of Denville, N.J., adopted Jumper in June 2024, three years after learning about Kabul Small Animal Rescue - the rescue that saved the canine.
The 'Healing Uvalde' murals were conceived by longtime resident Abel Ortiz in the days after the May 24, 2022, school shooting
After losing her best friend Stone, rescue horse Beja was inconsolable with grief until she met a broodmare named Macchiato at a farm in Maryland.
"I have been working as a model for over 20 years, and I still am fighting to this day for equality of size diversity on the runway on the covers of magazines, and film, and TV," Graham told PEOPLE
As Kevin Hart received the 25th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the actor told reporters that he felt "overwhelmed with emotion by the support" for his career. Jimmy Fallon, Dave Chappelle, Tiffany Haddish, Chelsea Handler and more spoke on Hart's behalf at the ceremony.
Elton John and his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin were awarded the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song by The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
After their sons died from gun-related suicides, Vermont moms Emily Hackett-Fiske and Alyssa Black teamed up to create criminal penalties for the unsecured storage of guns.
A family's sorrow, one year later ~
Frances Musgrove recalls the day a psychiatrist told her that her son Justin, then 22, would probably never work again.
Twelve years ago Eric Smith believed he was a secret agent who needed to kill his mother to save the world - like half of all people with schizophrenia, Smith didn't understand he was ill.
Special report on the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
As families and loved ones grieve the heartbreaking deaths of the 19 children and two adults who were killed at Robb Elementary School earlier this week, one father is opening up about the "super special" daughter he lost in the tragedy.
Stronger, fatal opioids online or on the street ended these 1010 lives. Inside the loss—and the fight to stop the surge
In a reversal of historical trends, Black drug users now overdose at a higher rate than whites who die from drugs in a majority of U.S. states, according to the CDC.
Amanda Eubanks says her 13-year-old boy didn't know what drug he was taking, and got a counterfeit pill containing enough fentanyl to fatally poison him.
Tiffany Robertson's life was cut short when the talented vocalist from northeastern Ohio took a pill mixed with the lethal opioid fentanyl.
"The word 'can't' didn't exist in his vocabulary because if he wanted something bad enough - like being a Marine - he was going to get it," Shana Chappell says of her son Anything Kareem Nikoui said he was going to do, he did. At 4 years old, he set his sights on becoming a U.S.
Hunter Lopez's family remembers his loyal, "life of the party" spirit: the dedication to serve that brought him to the Marines and the job he was doing when he died last week Hunter Lopez was just following his heart four years ago when he enlisted in the Marine Corps.
"COVID killed my son but not how you think," says Brad Hunstable, who opens up to PEOPLE about his family's devastating loss.
As incoming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took their oaths of office on Wednesday on the west front of the U.S. Capitol, veteran PEOPLE correspondent Alexandra Rockey Fleming watched from just feet away, among the gathered lawmakers and other guests.
Cindy Singer and Staci Katz founded Our2Sons after seeing their sons struggle with substance abuse Helping people cope with their addictions can be difficult in the best of times, but it's a job made infinitely harder during a pandemic.
"We figured, if we're already doing this for one kid, what difference will another one make?" says parent and teacher Josh Dougherty Everyone has seen children's tantrums, but when first-time parents Alicia and Josh Dougherty welcomed 4-year-old foster child Alex into their home, they soon learned that his were titanic by any standards.
In 2003, 19-year-old Private J.R. Martinez was on a routine patrol when the Humvee he was driving hit an antitank mine in Iraq.
It's time for outdoor pup play group at Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation. As with most everything at this Falls Church, Va., pet refuge, it's a team effort. "Don't forget to bend your knees!" says Suzanne Petroni, warning her cadre of helpers that to stand rigidly in the play yard is to risk being bowled over by exuberant dogs as they gallop past.
During the shooting, Cox waited outside the room where his coworkers huddled on the floor beneath two desks, holding hands Tara McGee and her coworkers had just settled in for their "Power Hour" - that final 60-minute push of the workday - when someone shouted the words McGee never thought she'd hear: "Live shooter!"
In addiction phraseology, it's often called "rock bottom." It's a state of mind known as the nadir of suffering, an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. Sometimes it's a jumpoff point at which misery is traded for normalcy and meaning, where one life ends and another begins.
In Saroyal Booker's life, it seemed it was one thing after the next. At age 10, it was her single mother, addicted to drugs and unable to care for her. So Booker was sent to live with a grandmother in a home already jam-packed with other family members.
How is the opioid crisis changing the American family?
"Accept it, analyze i, and let yourself feel what you feel," Kaylee Muthart tells PEOPLE almost a year after the incident that resulted in her blindness Nearly a year ago, Kaylee Muthart horrified the world when she gouged out her own eyes during a meth-induced psychotic episode. Hallucinating wildly during the Feb.
The actress won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the John F. Kennedy Center
"Brian has been dead for 136 days," says his mother, Vicki Bishop. "I watched him die over many years, and it was a long, slow, horrible death." Her son's decades-long battle with opioids blotted out the sun in her own life, says Bishop, 65, of Clarksburg, Md.
Beth Schmidt always begins her opioid-awareness sessions by introducing her boy. At one such event, she motions toward his photos - the solemn baseball-team picture, his sweet, clean-cut middle school portrait, the cheek-to-cheek selfie of mother and son - as she tells a hushed audience of about a dozen how Sean fought and lost his battle with opioid addiction.
As a kid, he never read books. Now he's writing the stories that he missed growing up.
Authorities said at least 58 people were killed and 489 were injured in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history
The young mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 33.
In America, someone dies of an overdose every 10 minutes. Stories of families shattered by the heroin epidemic and the heroes saving their communities.
For nearly a decade, Rachael Kinder's life had been ruled by heroin. But last year, after repeated attempts, the Milton, West Virginia, native managed to break her addiction via a mix of counseling and methadone, the medication-recovery drug.
The Facebook post about Jordan Roche was startlingly frank: "As you may or may not know, my son Jordan passed away September 26th from a heroin overdose," his mother wrote. "Jordan was a sweet young man with a great big heart.
Kathy Mitchell wants to share something with you. She's not proud of it, and it's not a behavior she hopes you'll emulate. It's just the truth: As a teen, Kathy drank alcohol while pregnant with her daughter, Karli. It was a perilous if unwitting mistake that has defined both of their lives.
The burning death of a 19-year-old girl has broken hearts and baffled investigators in a small Mississippi town.
Barack and Michelle Obama attended the 38th annual Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday amid the prime-time Oval Office speech Obama dipped into the White House's East Room shortly after hosting a reception for five of the six honorees, Carole King, Cicely Tyson, Rita Moreno, George Lucas and conductor Seiji Ozawa - the sixth honoree, The Eagles, have postponed their participation until 2016.
If I had known that every day I would lose a piece of Jason, a lot of our days might have been different.
I m here to look into the eyes of America s youth and say, You matter, Stewart said at the event in D.C. As a child, Whitney Stewart didn't believe her life was worth living. In fact, she didn't think she'd make it past the age of 14.
Two young journalists are fatally shot by a disgruntled colleague -- on live television.
After the shocking shooting deaths of nine church members, grieving loved ones express their anguish -- and forgiveness.
After being rescued in Iraq 12 years ago, the former POW is embracing life as a mom and educator.
At 32, I had what many women strive for: great health, a loving husband, two beautiful children, and a satisfying career as a government contractor in marketing and communications. So if you'd told me then that four months after giving birth to my second child, I'd be running naked down a freeway shoulder in rush-hour traffic, I'd have said you were out of your mind.
"We're destroying way too many communities and families," says Legend of what he believes to be a flawed system "We need to really rethink our criminal justice system," the musician told PEOPLE Friday at Politico 's An Evening with John Legend panel discussion in Washington, D.C. "We've ratcheted up penalties for everything.
The burned girl. Since she was a young child, that has been Zebonie Lopez's designation. It is more than a description- it's a shroud, keeping Zebonie, 16, of Lake Wales, Florida, and girls like her from believing in themselves and thinking beyond their skin.
There was never a defining moment - no attached tick, no rash - at least none that any of us can recall.
I hand-picked my newest son from a catalog. His name is Simon, and he's from a town north of Hamburg, Germany. He loves sports (especially soccer, but he's learning about American football, baseball and basketball) and plays the classical guitar. He says, "That sounds great!"
She was a typical teen who liked Facebook and country music -- and then she joined a convent.
1,500 Members of 1st Battalion 6th Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., were among the first to deploy for the new surge in Afghanistan. On the eve of a seven-month tour, some of the young men and their families share their hopes and fears.
In December PEOPLE Met a Group of Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., Just Hours Before They Left for Helmand Province.
Bullied at their old schools, junior high kids of every stripe find a welcoming haven in Milwaukee.
Can an intellectually disabled mom raise a gifted daughter? It's working so far for Myra and Bonnie Brown.
Two months after her eldest shipped out to Iraq in 2006, Mary Conboy of Philadelphia got a call. "Mom, the bunks stink. Can you send sheets and pillows?" asked Marine Lance Cpl. Adam Conboy, 21.
When Jennifer Trubenbach met a teenager in Zimbabwe whose face had been disfigured by a land mine, her life -- and his -- would never be the same.
What does it really look like on their tour bus? In their green room? Backstage? Come along to find out!
On Feb. 20, Marine Sgt. Matt Roberts, 23, deployed to Iraq for the third time in as many years. Staying behind is his wife, Patricia, 22, and their sons Isaiah, 3, and Joseph, 2. People spent four days with the family at home on Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., as they prepared to part.
The 13 men who worked together in the Sago Mine of West Virginia depended on family, friends -- and each other. Here is the story of how they lived -- and their final desperate hours.
Even Lynndie England seemed to find it hard to look. In a small courtroom at Fort Hood, Texas, on May 3, Army prosecutor Capt. Chris Graveline projected 20 pictures of the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison onto a 12-ft. screen.