Paul F. Salopek joined the metropolitan staff of the Chicago Tribune in January, 1996. He is a general assignment reporter who has written in-depth articles on immigration, the environment and urban affairs.

Prior to joining the Tribune, he worked as a writer for the National Geographic for three years, and wrote the October, 1995, cover story on Africa's mountain gorillas. Before that, he reported on U.S.-Mexico border issues for the El Paso (TX) Times. In 1990 he was Gannett News Service bureau chief in Mexico City.

Salopek began his journalism career in 1985 when his motorcycle broke down in Roswell, New Mexico, and he took a police reporting job at the local newspaper to earn repair money. Since then he has covered conflicts in Central America, New Guinea and the Balkans.

Outside of journalism, Salopek has worked off and on as a commercial fisherman, most recently with the scallop fleet out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1991.

Salopek received an undergraduate degree in environmental biology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1984.

He was born Feb. 9, 1962, in Barstow, CA, and raised in central Mexico. Salopek and his wife, painter Linda Lynch, live in the Fulton Market district of Chicago.