The Former Journalist Who Risked It All
The stench had hit her first. A choking mix of raw sewage, grease, and sweat that clung to the humid air outside the prison gates. Christina Hoag had spent weeks navigating bureaucracy—had reached out to the department of prison only to be rejected entry, had opted to fabricate a disguise, and had rehearsed her story to reach this moment. She stood in the queue, trying to steady her breath. Posed as a nun, she had found her way into one of the most notorious prisons in Venezuela. Around her, other visitors jostled nervously, not a single person uttered a word as they made their way toward the makeshift search hut.
Inside the hut, a guard barked orders. “Unzip your pants,” Hoag complied. She laid her hands on the cold, splintered table, waiting for the invasive cavity search she’d read about. She held her breath as a guard patted down her stomach, their fingers pressed into the waistband of her jeans with a roughness that felt like both procedure and punishment. Once done, Hoag stepped into the prison yard, and there were no guards in sight. “The guards stayed on the perimeter,” Hoag explains, “The inmates ruled the prison,” she continues.
Some leaned against walls, others moved in clusters, their eyes watchful, predatory. Her companion—a real nun—led her deeper into the labyrinthine cell blocks, past stagnant pools of black wastewater and rusting pipes that leaked foul-smelling liquid onto the floors. In one cramped cell, Hoag perched on a mattress balanced atop overturned plastic buckets, listening as an inmate spoke about how he ended up in this squalid purgatory. The metal bed frames, the inmate explained, had been dismantled into shanks—wielded into makeshift knives and weapons.
The danger was palpable, but so was the story. “I just saw it as part of my job,” she says simply. “I had to. Somebody had to bear witness.”
For Christina Hoag, stepping into the unknown was never a choice—it was a way of life. “As a child, I moved around a lot,” she recalls, fingers fidgeting, eyes glazed on her beige painted
walls. Born in New Zealand, she moved to Sydney, Australia, at a young age, only to be uprooted again at thirteen and resettled in New Jersey—where she would later land her first job at the Associated Press. By seventeen, she was at Boston University, earning an English degree by twenty. But the idea of settling down never quite fit. She spent a year in Guatemala, then seven years in Venezuela, then Miami, as a staff in The Miami Herald, and finally Los Angeles for the Associated Press.
“Growing up, I had to do lots of things I didn’t want to do—go to a strange school with a strange accent and strange clothing,” she says. “And I didn’t have a choice, I had to go. I had to swallow my fear and my nerves and just go.”
This deep-rooted bravery became the backbone of her career; It wasn’t just about being fearless, it was about refusing to be afraid.
“Christina has no fear,” read one of her evaluations at the AP of Los Angeles. She had done it all. She had walked the streets of South Los Angeles, talked to street gang members when others wouldn't dare. She had crawled into a gold mine to unearth a story. She had hidden beneath a car, breath held, as Salvadoran soldiers scoured the streets above, hunting for sex workers she was interviewing. She had been followed. She had been threatened. She had looked danger in the eye and dared it to blink first.
“As a journalist, you always want the worst,” Hoag admits. She had seen the world at its most brutal, its most unforgiving, and still, she stayed chasing the story. She had learned to live with the weight of what she had witnessed in her line of work, “I saw a kid getting killed by a stray bullet,” she softly said. “But what I find interesting, others run from.”
The prison in Caracas was one of the worst, as she describes; overcrowded, violent, and ruled by the most dangerous inmates. It wasn’t a place for outsiders—especially not journalists. But Hoag had spent years seeking out places others feared, asking questions no one wanted answered.
Presently, sitting on her beige velvet couch, Hoag sips on her green tea from a hand-painted ceramic cup brought back from Mexico. Nothing about her demeanor suggests the woman who walked through mines or snuck into a prison being questioned by murderers.
Clad in flared navy jeans and a warm smile, she laughs when told that she doesn’t look the part of a war correspondent. “People always expect someone tougher,” she says, shaking her head. “Maybe someone with muscles. But no, it’s just me.”
In 2022, Hoag finally called it quits from her career. Not because she wanted to, but because she developed tendinitis—a condition in which the tissue connecting muscle to bone becomes inflamed—that forced her to stop being a journalist.
“I’ve overworked myself,” she admits, while cradling her left arm. “I chased too many stories, spent too many hours typing away,” she adds with a sad chuckle. Her final byline was at the Associated Press in Los Angeles—the last place she worked as a journalist, the last chapter of a career built on fearlessness.
For years, the adrenaline had fueled her—dangerous assignments, deathly encounters. Now, at 61 years old, Hoag hides in the safety of her Santa Monica home in Los Angeles. The greatest risk for her now was learning how to stay still.
“The truth is never comfortable. And it shouldn’t be.” she says, gripping her left arm once more, an unconscious grimace flickering across her face.
“My life has been unpredictable, but it’s for the story, it always is.”
