Pulitzer-Prize Winning MV Grad Discusses AIDS, His Documentary and Giving Back to Community

What does it really mean to have “an evening with Jose Antonio Vargas,” as the Los Altos Rotary AIDS Project called its fundraiser at Los Altos High School Tuesday night?

To aspiring teen journalists in the audience at Eagle Theater, it was a chance to hear a highly successful graduate of Mountain View High School share insights about the journalism industry. And to others, it was an opportunity to hear about the Rotary’s work with AIDS and to see film clips of Vargas’ documentary on AIDS in D.C.

Rotary members planned the evening to help reach their fundraising goal of $15,000 for support of Child AIDS Prevention in Liberia. The Rotary's support of AIDS work dates back to 1989 and its Peabody-award-winning documentary, The Los Altos Story.

The talk with Vargas, a "local-boy-done-good" attraction, was meant to educate and bring awareness, said Rich Casey, president of the Los Altos Rotary AIDS Project.

“A lot of people feel AIDS is solved, but Washington, D.C., has one of the highest rates—not in the country, but in the world,” Casey said.

Vargas graduated from Mountain View High School in 2000. He eventually went on to become a national political reporter for The Washington Post, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 as part of the team covering the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting massacre. 

After working at the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post and, most recently, for The Huffington Post, Vargas said he is just “trying to figure out what it means to be a multi-media journalist.” (Patch is part of the newly created Huffington Post Media Group.) Most recently, Vargas profiled Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg for The New Yorker and reflected on that interview in relation to the extraordinary events in Egypt these last two weeks. 

Vargas showed clips of a 2010 documentary he co-produced, called The Other City, based on his Post series about the AIDS epidemic in Washington, D.C. The title derives from the sense that there are really two cities in Washington—the official, federal city, and the urban community where the rest of the population lives. The "other D.C." is the community that the legions of tourists and politicians in the nation's capital don't see. Vargas warned that the scenes in the documentary are “pretty raw." 

“The goal of the movie is to get people to think of AIDS in a different way, not just preaching to the choir,” Vargas said.

Leaders with the Los Altos Rotary AIDS Project will head to Liberia next week to kick off the program in partnership with Global Strategies for HIV Prevention and the Rotary Club of Sinkor. The support of Liberian clinics includes life-saving drugs, education and diagnostics for women and babies suffering from the infection, Casey said. 

It's important work, Vargas said.

“The only reason I said ‘yes’ to coming here tonight is because this community has done so much for me,” said Vargas, who now lives in New York but comes back frequently to see family and speak at local schools. It appears he helped the Rotary reach its goal. Admission to the event was declared free at the door, because the group exceeded its goal with donations, reaching nearly double of the $15,000 it hoped to raise, Casey said. 

Vargas will start his next documentary soon, which will entail different sides of the DREAM Act, a federal bill that would grant permanent residency to illegal immigrant youth if they complete two years at a four-year college. 

Members of Los Altos High School's newspaper, The Talon, asked Vargas several questions about his career.

To that, Vargas strongly suggested learning about “how to think like a journalist,” to bring insight to the articles one writes. To do that, you needs to be curious about the world around you, he said. Resist the urge to fill in pauses during an interview by saying something. Let people talk, don't jump in, and you will get a fuller picture of a person's meaning.

Rick Wadley, who said his sister was on the school newspaper staff when Vargas went to Mountain View High, said of Vargas, “I like his style. He listens to people and delivers a story while letting others decide what they think … I wish we had more journalists like him."