Rollins reporting for The Star

Renata Rollins joins The Star this week as a part-time reporter.

She will cover news related to Grand Coulee City Hall, Electric City, and Coulee Medical Center, as well as occasional features and community stories.

Rollins spent early childhood in Colville, and grew up in Spokane in a multigenerational house with her parents, siblings and grandmother. She first visited the Grand Coulee area at age 11, on a family camping trip to Steamboat Rock, and fell in love with the basalt and sage.

"We came into town for groceries, and my eyes got really wide," she recalls. "I remember thinking, 'There are stores here, there are houses. People live here. Why don't we live here? Why doesn't everyone live here?' It was just so beautiful to me."

Last January that happened for her, thanks to a job with the Colville Tribes. Though she didn't stay long in that position, she bought a house in Grand Coulee and says she's in the area for good.

"I studied journalism and communications in college, wrote for several small-town papers in my early 20s, and worked a variety of social service, caregiving and government jobs in Olympia," Rollins said. "But I always wanted to come back to the east side. The pandemic forced me to get serious about finding a way."

She says she didn't expect to come back to journalism with so many challenges facing the news business, but it's a welcome surprise.

"It was definitely a 'right place and right time' sort of thing," she said. I'm excited to get to write stories, meet people and cover life in a community that I always hoped to be a part of."

Rollins can be reached at renata@grandcoulee.com.