Veteran American-Statesman reporter Lori Hawkins, who chronicled business news for the publication for more than three decades, died Thursday after complications from a medical procedure. She was 57.
“She was a beautiful human being who cared about her colleagues and community like no other,” Statesman Managing Editor Courtney Sebesta said. “Her tenaciousness as a journalist came through in every story she wrote. Her attitude was always, ‘What can I do? How can I help?’ Lori leaves a gigantic void in our newsroom family.”
Executive Editor Manny García said Hawkins was the definition of an unselfish leader.
“She mentored so many of our new reporters, sharing her wisdom, sources and background,” García said. “Just an incredible colleague and human being.”
Hawkins’ byline appeared regularly in this newspaper for 30 years. Always ahead of the news curve, she documented the advance of high technology in Austin, which came to define the city’s economic and cultural rise. Starting in 1994, she reported on software, biotech, startups, real estate and financial services. In 1996, Hawkins became the Statesman’s technology reporter.
She most recently worked to cover retail in Austin, but she often assisted with coverage of business news outside that beat, and her expertise was sought by many in the newsroom.
Her most recent Statesman story, dated March 29, reported about Austin billionaire John Paul DeJoria’s bet on artificial intelligence as he launches a new company.
Statesman investigative reporter Tony Plohetski first worked with Hawkins while he was reporting from Round Rock on the first layoffs at Dell Computers after the dot-com bust of the early 2000s.
“Lori was by nature a people person,” Plohetski said. “She had a real way of engaging with people. She was able to make people laugh. People trusted her, and she really built up a network, especially in the tech community.”
In 2004, Hawkins reported from Bangalore, India, on the trend of American companies outsourcing tech jobs to that country and elsewhere in Asia.
“She chronicled the tech booms and tech busts,” Plohetski said. “She was on the front line of doing this with depth, analysis and context.”
“Newsrooms are full of contrarian personalities,” said KUT General Manager Debbie Hiott, who worked with Hawkins for more than two decades in the Statesman newsroom, including as executive editor, “but I don’t think I know of a single person who would have anything but the best to say about her. That’s because she was a good human being to everyone, no matter what. She was an expert on the region’s business and tech evolution, and never lost sight of Austin’s complicated history and context.”
An unexpected loss
Hawkins was born May 30, 1966, in Dayton, Ohio, the daughter of John D. Hawkins and Donna Hawkins. She grew up in New Mexico and other states. She graduated from the University of Arizona, where she worked on the staff of the Daily Wildcat student newspaper, and she studied Spanish at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara in Mexico.
Hawkins married Paul Sunby, and they had two children, Sora Sunby, who works in Chicago, and Will Sunby, a senior at Stephen F. Austin State University.
“She loved her children very much,” Paul Sunby said Friday. “She was very proud of them.”
Many of her newsroom colleagues and members of the business community expressed shock at the news of her death, which spread Friday morning.
“Lori was the perfect blend of balance,” sports columnist Kirk Bohls said. “Dogged reporter and just a sweetheart of a person. You wanted to be her friend. What a heartbreaking loss for her family and all of us.”
