From the Archives: Haunting Photos.

Glenn Kulik was molested numerous times when he was ten by his best friend's uncle. When I met him, Glenn was married and had a son whom he spent every afternoon with. He has since started multiple therapy groups in the Los Angeles area.

When I talk about past photo assignments and the sometimes intense reality of my job as a photojournalist, I mention how there are a few stories I have worked on that still haunt me, even a few years after the fact.

(click on the links to read each story.)

The biggest one was in fall of 2008 when we did a story on a locally made documentary, Boyhood Shadows, about local men who were molested as boys and now how they're dealing with it as adults. It also described a Monterey-based sex therapist who had started the first male group for survivors of sexual assault and discussed many myths and truths to men who were molested as boys.

One story in particular hit me pretty hard. Nick McDaniel grew up in north Salinas and attended high school in that area. After multiple abuses from his father and fellow classmates, he suffered heavy depression and gained an unhealthy amount of weight.

When I had met him while working on the article, he was in his mid-30s and has since bettered himself and enjoyed every single breath and waking moment, because he had "only been living for five years." As a fellow Monterey County native, it blew my mind when he mentioned it wasn't until only recently that he had seen the sunset over the ocean. For 30 years, he lived less that 15 minutes from the ocean and had never seen it.


Nick McDaniel stands in front of the doorway where his father physically abused him numerous times in their north Salinas home.

Another story was when I visited Jensen Camp trailer park deep in the Cachagua backwoods during a story about the very unhealthy living conditions of the residents and the lack of support from the local government.

I talked with one man, Chuck Rider (below) who tipped off the county to asbestos and unclean water in the camp, making him a black sheep within the small community for tipping off the authorities.


Chuck Rider lights up a cigarette in front of his trailer. He wears a device that allows him to talk. He also pointed out numerous places where he and his daughter Ashley had fallen through the floor many times.

The moment I remember most striking was when he was showing me his bedroom and I asked about the fishing pools lining the wall near the ceiling. For the slightest second, his sunken eyes and sad demeanor brightened into a fleeting moment of happiness as he told me about being a kid and going fishing every chance he got with his father and he still wishes he could do that.

The photo (below) was right after his told me the story.

The last story was a feature that put real faces on the foreclosure crisis in 2008.

After getting a seemingly good deal on a home in Salinas, Abel Cardona Jr. and his wife were in massive debt over mortgage bills and other expenses. Cardona had bought the place as his dream home for his wife, two children and his mother, Maria Alonzo, to live in, but with massive debt and a potential foreclosure, he couldn't live with the fact he could not provide, so he hung himself in the backyard.

Alonzo made a point of buying the house back from the banks as that is what her son had wanted.


Maria Alonzo stands in front of the home her late-son bought for his family and mother to live in. She was a point in the story when she first found his body.

Posted by staff photographer Nic Coury.