By Marsha McFadden
Advertiser City Editor

It was late in the day when we first heard that a baby was dead after being left in a hot car in the sun for hours.

In fact, we learned about it from television as our broadcast news partners at Channel 8 broke the story on their 5 o'clock newscast Monday. I asked the assistant city editor, who had been watching, to call the station to be sure he had understood correctly. It seemed unbelievable.

We knew it was a story that would be very difficult to report.

Gathering the facts would be difficult because the infant was discovered at about 1 p.m. Police, emergency personnel and others who handled the case and could provide information were likely to have left the Windward YMCA, where the baby was found. Part of the challenge at that point was getting a reporter to the scene in the hope that anyone was still there to interview. Advertiser reporter Peter Boylan (his first day on the job) left the office for Kailua while veteran reporter Curtis Lum made telephone calls to learn what he could from police, emergency personnel and other sources.

What we published in the next day's paper was a pretty straightforward account. But there were still many questions in a story that not only presented news-gathering difficulties but was difficult to fathom.

The reporters, editors, page designers and headline writers at work on Monday night held discussions about whom to call for information, whether the story should be put on the front page and what the headline should say. But as aunties, coaches, soccer moms and soccer dads, we knew the circumstances of 10-month-old Anuhea Paet's death — whatever they were — went well beyond the logistics of journalism.

Because it was a tough story to cover, we kept in mind throughout the week that it was important to have accurate, complete reports.

In a follow-up for our PM edition Tuesday, we reported that little Anuhea was in a locked car in the parking lot in the sun at the YMCA for six hours. That was incorrect. For the morning edition Wednesday, we reported that the infant was in the car as her mother drove from place to place starting at about 7:15 a.m. We still had not gotten it exactly right.

In Wednesday's PM and again Thursday morning, we wrote that the baby's mother left her in the car — which was parked in the sun in a Kane'ohe parking lot — from 7:15 to 11:30 a.m. It is unclear whether she realized the child was in the car during that time. She then drove to the YMCA parking lot to teach a class from noon to 1 p.m., at which time she discovered her child. That was the way police finally said the circumstances were best described.

Each of our accounts had been based on the best information we had at deadline, and our best interpretation of that information. But the story had to be changed and corrected as the result of follow-up calls we made to police to push for clarification. One difficulty was that even the police were working from sketchy information, since they had not done a full interview with the mother.

Gathering the information was difficult, yes. But it was even harder imagining that a child was left in a hot parked car.

It's the kind of story you find in our A section, with a dateline from the Mainland.

But this was Kailua.

That made the details so important, we wanted to get it right, no matter how many times we needed to re-report the sequence of events.

By all accounts, Anuhea's mother was extremely distraught after finding her daughter lifeless in the car. We have made several attempts to contact her so she has the opportunity to talk about her baby and about what happened.

As we continue to report this story, we will do whatever it takes to do so accurately — and with sensitivity.

Reach Marsha McFadden at 535-2426 or mmcfadden@honoluluadvertiser.com.