Author

Rebecca Rivas is a multimedia reporter who covers Missouri's cannabis industry. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, she has been reporting in Missouri since 2001, including more than a decade as senior reporter and video producer at the St. Louis American, the nation’s leading African-American newspaper.
Missouri bill to prevent hair discrimination advances on eve of Black History Month
By: Rebecca Rivas - February 10, 2022
As a young girl, state Rep. Raychel Proudie remembers when the beads in her hair would clap together as she walked. Her teachers would call it a “distraction” — the same way they did when her hair was “too high.” “You would come home and tell your mom, or she would get a note about […]
Missouri’s public safety leaders push to tighten accountability for police officers
By: Rebecca Rivas - January 31, 2022
State officials last year investigated allegations that a law enforcement officer pointed a handgun at his son’s head while intoxicated. The same officer was also intoxicated during “multiple incidents of domestic disturbances,” Sandy Karsten, director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, testified last week during a Senate committee hearing. Karsten wanted to suspend the […]
COVID surge forced rural Missouri hospital to build makeshift ICU for dying patient
By: Rebecca Rivas - January 28, 2022
For six days, Dr. Mohamed Nabeel Kuziez and his team at a small emergency room in southeastern Missouri did everything they could to keep a 67-year-old woman with severe pneumonia alive. The day after Kathie Ganime was admitted on Jan. 12, Kuziez saw that her infection was so critical that she needed to be transferred […]
As Missouri looks to legalize recreational marijuana, expungement gets renewed attention
By: Rebecca Rivas - January 24, 2022
The push to legalize recreational marijuana use in Missouri is coming from multiple directions, with a handful of proposed initiative petitions and at least one bill, and potentially more, backed by Republican lawmakers. Each hopes to place the issue on the 2022 ballot for voter approval. And each proposal also includes a provision that, while […]
Missouri Senate hears bipartisan push to forgive mistakenly overpaid unemployment benefits
By: Rebecca Rivas - January 20, 2022
Tracie Engelmeyer was among hundreds of bus drivers who were furloughed in St. Louis County in March 2020 because of the pandemic. School-district authorities told them that even though drivers are contracted labor, they would qualify for unemployment benefits and urged them to apply. Engelmeyer recalled the conversation she had with a school district representative […]
Bipartisan group of Missouri lawmakers hope to close domestic violence gun loophole
By: Rebecca Rivas and Tessa Weinberg - January 18, 2022
Marsha Keene-Frye grew up around guns, going hunting with her family from a young age near her home in Mississippi County. To this day, she still regularly carries a firearm and considers herself a supporter of the Second Amendment, just like most of her neighbors in southeastern Missouri. But for 27 years, Keene-Frye has worked […]
Republicans renew push to make it harder for voters to amend Missouri constitution
By: Rebecca Rivas - January 12, 2022
After years of watching Missouri voters amend the state constitution to raise the minimum wage or legalize medical marijuana, Republican lawmakers are once again pushing to make the initiative petition process harder. A measure sponsored by Rep. Mike Henderson, R-Bonne Terre, would ask voters to increase the number of signatures needed for initiative petitions to […]
As Missourians seek COVID tests, politicians seek to lay blame for long lines and shortages
By: Rudi Keller and Rebecca Rivas - January 7, 2022
Missourians are scrambling to find coronavirus tests amid surging cases of COVID-19 caused by the omicron variant, and politicians are scrambling to find someone to blame for the shortage. The state is rationing the tests it is buying for residents. No one will be able to order a free at-home test from the state Department […]
‘We’re quite frightened’: Missouri hospitals sound alarm over latest COVID wave
By: Rebecca Rivas and Rudi Keller - January 5, 2022
St. Louis area hospitals are getting “crushed” by the highest number of COVID patients they’ve seen yet in the pandemic, hospital leaders said in a press conference on Wednesday afternoon. And those patients are on track to double in the next couple weeks, according to projections from the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force, which […]
Rebeccah Bennett was ‘spiritual center,’ strategist in St. Louis’ COVID-19 response
By: Rebecca Rivas - December 31, 2021
It was never a question. As the St. Louis region began to close schools and issue stay-home orders due to the pandemic, Rebeccah Bennett knew that the most vulnerable — the Black community, the unhoused and immigrant populations — would bear the brunt of this deadly virus. And Bennett, founder of the consulting group Emerging […]
Couple creates food hub in southwest Missouri to help families during ‘difficult times’
By: Rebecca Rivas - December 30, 2021
Anita and Gary Burney moved to Back Acres Homestead — or as they jokingly call it, “Back Ache-rs’ Homestead” — in southwestern Missouri three years ago to find a quieter life. Just a few miles from both the Arkansas and Oklahoma borders, the Burneys’ homestead features a lovely stone house, chickens roaming, a garden, some […]
After 33 years advocating for victims of domestic violence, Colleen Coble is retiring
By: Rebecca Rivas - December 29, 2021
It was spring of 1989, and Colleen Coble had been working as a lobbyist in Jefferson City for just a few months. She stood in the gallery of the Missouri House of Representatives, waiting for a bill regarding protections for domestic violence victims to come up for a vote. It had to pass out of […]