Before joining The Center, Sandoval Palos was assistant city editor at the Sacramento Bee, where he supervised environment, science, and regional development coverage. From 1997 to 2005, he was a Latin America correspondent, based in Mexico City, for the Dallas Morning News and Knight Ridder Newspapers. Sandoval Palos’s career has spanned three decades and includes award-winning coverage of the savings and loan scandal, the deregulation of public utility companies and crime in Latin America.  His list of awards includes the Gerald Loeb prize for business journalism, the Overseas Press Club and the Inter-American Press Association. His investigation into the fate of millions of dollars withheld from paychecks of World War II-era Mexican guest workers in the United States fueled a lawsuit that led to a reimbursement by the Mexican government. Sandoval Palos also co-authored the 1997 biography The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement published by Harcourt.