Frank del Olmo
Frank del Olmo (May 18, 1948 – February 19, 2004) was an editor, columnist and reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Born in Los Angeles, he was raised mainly by his mother after his father left the family. He earned a journalism degree magna cum laude from California State University, Northridge in 1970 and began an internship at the Times that same year, mentored by Ruben Salazar.
Del Olmo planned to study at Columbia University, but after the Chicano Moratorium march in 1970 and Salazar’s death, he stayed with the Times to continue his work. In 1972 he helped found the California Chicano News Media Association. He also won an Emmy for The Unwanted, a documentary about illegal immigration.
As a Times columnist from 1980, Del Olmo wrote about Latino issues, immigration, city policies, culture and even baseball. He helped organize a 1982 meeting of Latino journalists that led to the creation of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 1984. He and his team received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the Latinos series, a landmark look at Southern California’s Latino community.
Del Olmo was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1987–1988. In 1992 he had a son named Frank, who was diagnosed with autism in 1994; Del Olmo later wrote about autism in several columns. He became the first Latino on the Times masthead as assistant to the editor in 1989 and was promoted to associate editor in 1998. He was inducted into the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Hall of Fame in 2002.
Del Olmo died of a heart attack in his Los Angeles Times office on February 19, 2004. His legacy includes the Frank del Olmo Elementary School in Los Angeles (named in 2006) and his archives at California State University, Northridge.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:28 (CET).