Isolde Raftery
Interim Managing Editor
About
Isolde Raftery has been the Interim Managing Editor KUOW since 2024. Previously, she was the station's Online Managing Editor.
She has worked for NBCNews.com, The New York Times (where she was a fellow on the Metro desk in 2010), and the Columbian and Skagit Valley Herald newspapers here in Washington state.
Born in Ireland to an Irish dad and a French mom, Isolde grew up in Dublin, Paris, and Seattle, where she attended James A. Garfield High School. She later graduated from Barnard College in New York City and received a Master's degree in Literary Nonfiction from the University of Oregon.
You can send her tips and story ideas via email or, more privately, by Instagram direct message @isoldedenise.
Location: Seattle
Languages: English, French
Pronouns: she/her
Stories
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Antibody testing could reveal how widespread coronavirus has been in California
California researchers believe that coronavirus may have been spreading in California last fall. That might explain why Californians haven’t been ravaged by the virus -- many of them may have built up immunity.
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DIY masks can block coronavirus. Here are tips before you sew
At first they said not to bother with masks; they didn’t work, they said.
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Did Grandma bring coronavirus to the Seattle-area nursing home? A family weighs the evidence
Grandma lay on the bed, her eyes open and vacant. She wore a thin white hospital smock dotted with small flowers and held her granddaughter’s hand as afternoon light enveloped the room.
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Stay at home, the governor says. But what does that mean, exactly?
Gov. Jay Inslee announced a stay-at-home order on Monday to fight back coronavirus. As he spoke, the state had updated its deaths from the virus to 110, and case count to 2,000. The governor's order left some wondering about what leeway they had to maintain some semblance of normalcy. We compiled your questions, and tried to answer them below. We will continue attempting to answer the questions that come in.
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N95 masks spotted at Target in Seattle, and politicians swoop in divert them to hospitals
When reporter Ann Dornfeld went to Target in West Seattle on Friday morning to buy toilet paper, she was shocked to see rows of N95 protective masks for sale -- $6.79 for two.
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Diary of a maybe-coronavirus patient in Seattle who tried to get tested
Katherine is a 29-year-old Seattleite who is healthy but who picks up the bug of the moment. And now she wonders whether she has coronavirus, which is spreading in the region.
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Where have the masks gone? Some Seattle doctors and nurses want to know; others aren't concerned
Where are the N95 masks?
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Avoid Seattle, Trump's top economic advisor says
Speaking on the cable business channel CNBC, President Trump’s top economic advisor Larry Kudlow suggested people might want to avoid Seattle. Seattle is the epicenter of the outbreak of coronvirus in the U.S., with 14 deaths so far, mostly related to a single nursing home in Kirkland.
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The ominous days leading up to the coronavirus outbreak in the Seattle area
It was odd, the firefighter thought, how many calls were coming from the Life Care nursing facility in Kirkland.
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14 now dead of coronavirus in Seattle area
Three more deaths from COVID-19, caused by coronavirus, were reported on Friday morning. That brings the total to 14 deaths from the virus in the Seattle area. Twelve of th have been at EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, Washington, across the lake from Seattle.