Mary Jordan, NF ’90

Jordan and her husband Kevin Sullivan, co-bureau chiefs of the Post’s Mexico City bureau, were recognized for their exposure of the treacherous and unjust conditions in the Mexico criminal justice system.

The cop looked Jimmy Salguero in the eyes and asked the question that would change his life.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Jimmy Salguero,” said Jimmy Salguero.

The officer clicked a few keys on his computer keyboard.

“No, you’re Jaime Garcia,” he said.

“No I’m not,” he insisted.

But it was no use. It was a Friday night, and the police would look good ending the week with a prize arrest. So a Guatemalan painter named Jimmy Salguero became Tijuana robber Jaime Garcia.

Telling the story later, Salguero, 32, said that he had been just another face in Tijuana, living in a Salvation Army shelter and trying to scheme his way across the border into the United States.

To pick up some cash, he had taken a job painting apartments. As he left work that evening in May 2000, the police stopped him and four Mexican painters and asked for their identification. The others produced ID cards. Salguero had none.

The officers whispered among themselves, then hauled him to the station, gave him a new name and sent him to La Mesa, one of the most notorious prisons in Latin America.

When Salguero protested, the cops punched him. They told him to shut up.

Behind bars, month after month, everyone called him Jaime.