Adam Markowitz

Born and raised in Queens, New York, Adam was the only son of a Columbia Physics professor and stay-at-home mother. His extended family of cousins, aunts and uncles were very tightly-knit, and was raised a reformist Jew. He was never heavily into physics like his father, but he did enjoy being raised around academia. He used to write family newsletters as a boy, and enjoyed his moments in the spotlight as family dinners would come to a hush as he was allowed to go over the biggest headlines, such as “Cousin Sheila Surprises Aunt Sally with a Spring Wedding” or “Cal Markowitz accepted into FBI Academy”.

His father was disappointed that Adam’s grades in math weren’t so stellar, but the boy’s tireless efforts for the school newspaper led him to a high school internship at a local paper, and a place at Columbia in the hard-to-get-into journalism and media school.

His first love was Manhattan, but as a young man he decided he wanted to branch out from home and essentially have an excuse for moving out of his old room in Queens. His first news job was in Los Angeles, which he hated, but the four years he spent there allowed him to secure his dream job in Philadelphia, working for the Philadelphia Proclaimer newspaper.

His first few years there were spent working the local news fluff items, and proving his chops to the other regular columnists. After a few years of that, he moved on to the politics desk, covering first local politics before harassing his boss to let him cover something bigger, like an election.

He was covering the Democratic caucus in 2008 when he met Karen Tarica, who was covering the caucus for the NY Times. He fell for her like a ton of bricks, and after dating long distance for two years, married. This turned out to be a bad move, as he found two people in love with their work just didn’t mix well. Within the next year and a half, they’d grown resentful of the time the other was taking away from their first love: journalism. They had an amicable divorce in spring of 2012, with Karen moving back to Manhattan and Adam staying in Philly.

He was in Washington, D.C. to cover the new president’s inauguration in January, making a fun trip out of it. He was on his way in when the tsunami hit the eastern seaboard, and his plane made an emergency landing in western Maryland. He’d thought he’d lived through the worst of it when he discovered he was wrong, and the tornadoes came. He sought shelter in the underground bunker of an abandoned farm, where he stayed for two days, too scared to come out until it was abundantly clear that he needed food and water…and to try and reach his family.

As he hit the roads, death showed its face all along the highway. Of those who’d survived, many – mostly women – were ill, apparently dying. He started off trying to “cover” the story, and in the end, he just lived it, and made his way northeast, hoping to find someone who could tell him what was going on in Queens…