I knew his dad, longtime journalist Steve Crews, had died in 2016, and that his mom Evelyn Crews had died just a month after the pandemic turned the world upside down, though not of COVID. “If you were going to - hypothetically - scatter your mother’s ashes in Los Angeles, and you wanted it to be somewhere nice but you are also riddled with anxiety and fear the police where would you go?” Here’s an uncomfortable question,” Sam Crews wrote. You get used to getting questions from people who don’t know who else to ask.Ī few months ago, I got direct message on Instagram from my oldest friend. But working as a journalist gives you a patina of authority on some subjects, whether you’ve earned it or not. Usually, we’re the ones asking questions. Journalists write obituaries and about murders, homicides, deaths of despair, COVID-19 death counts.