I greeted Nick Gerda last week the same way I’ve greeted him for the past year: a handshake, a hug, and a “Great job, man.”

Since last November, LAist reporter dropped bombshell after bombshell about Andrew Do, a longtime politician who most recently served as an Orange County supervisor.

I say “latest” because To resign after federal prosecutors announced he would plead guilty to accepting more than half a million dollars in bribes to direct more than $10 million in COVID-19 relief funds to a nonprofit run by his college-aged daughter, Rhiannon .

“The scheme essentially worked like Robin Hood in reverse,” Atty. E. Martin Estrada said at a press conference on October 22.

Estrada credited the media for breaking the story — which really meant Gerda, who used to attach microphones to my shirt when she was an Orange County PBS intern about 15 years ago.

And look at him now!

He’s like Clark Kent, with peach fuzz: tall, slim, soft-spoken, prefers khakis and long-sleeved shirts, and more serious than a Peace Corps volunteer. We met at my wife’s store in downtown Santa Ana, not far from where the Board of Supervisors meets, so I could offer my congratulations again — and not just for ending the career of a politician who was just as insufferable like the bow tie he wore.

Gerda’s career is an example of what happens when news organizations invest in local journalism, let reporters do the digging instead of writing clickbait, and shore them up in the face of real and imagined critics.

For over a decade with LAist and his former employer, the Voice of OC, Gerda reported on How a Sculptor Works a Slab of Marble. His torrents of public records requests led the watchdog to derisively refer to it as “OC noise.”

Last year, Do demanded that LAist fire Gerda for allegedly using falsified tax returns in its reporting, a furor that went nowhere because it wasn’t true. Days before FBI and IRS agents searched the homes of Do and his daughter, the politician appeared on a Little Saigon radio station to accuse Gerda and other opponents of “slander.”

“On the one hand, I feel vindicated,” the young reporter – just 33 – told me as we drank coffee, the strap of his digital watch half broken. “On the other hand, that’s the biggest concern I had looking at this: What happened to that money.”

Do’s misdeeds were so egregious that Gerda did the impossible in Orange County: unite Democrats and Republicans.

I asked Gerda why she thought the Do issue transcended OC’s partisan divide.

“People see that as an abuse of power,” he replied, “and that really connects with people, it worries them.”

Former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do, pictured during a 2021 news conference in Orange, pleaded guilty in a bribery case that a U.S. attorney called “Robin Hood in reverse.”

(Lilly Nguyen/Daily Pilot)

Local journalism was in the stars for Gerda long before he followed her. He accompanied his mother to Santa Ana city council and school board meetings as a teenager when I first started as a reporter and found her generous with quotes, insights and advice.

“My parents showed me how journalists have a very important role in society in seeking the truth,” Gerda said. “Speak truth to power when abuses occur.”

Journalism stuck with him after he earned a BA in political science from UC Irvine at just 18 and later studied at NYU and Cairo, considering international relations as a career.

In recent events, Gerda observed that Southern California news organizations were firing reporters who were “keeping an eye” on local government.

“I knew from seeing my parents and watching the local news as a child that people have a real ability to make a positive difference in their local community in a way that is often not possible at a national or international level,” he said .

Gerda returned home and enrolled in journalism classes at Orange Coast College, where she teaches. After a few internships, he landed a job at the Voice of OC, where he immediately caught the attention of editor Norberto Santana Jr. The founder of the nonprofit news agency said he took on Gerda to treat local reporting “like electrical work, like plumbing — a methodical method. approach. Follow the money. And he was just solid from the start.”

Santana Jr. put the cub reporter on the beat of county government, as he found himself at Do’s 2015 election night party, the first time Do ran for supervisor. Gerda’s clearest memory of that night: Do berating another Voice of OC reporter to the point where Do’s supporters had to restrain him.

“It stood out to me as the type of behavior towards a member of the media that I was not used to,” Gerda said.

The new supervisor immediately gave Gerda material to report on. There were questions about where he actually lived, and he unsuccessfully pursued a policy of shutting down public commenters he found offensive. His office used voter data to send taxpayer-funded mailings, prompting the state Legislature to ban such efforts within 60 days of an election.

None of this derailed Do’s career – he went on to win elections, becoming chairman of the Supervisory Board in 2021.

I asked Gerda why Do got away with things for so long.

Gerda cited a 2013 Orange County grand jury report that said the lack of a vibrant press in OC was essentially an invitation to civic corruption, which unfortunately turned out to be true.

The only publications that regularly cover a county of 3.1 million people are the Voice of OC, the Daily Pilot and the Orange County Register, which is a ghost of what it once was.

Mayor of Rancho Santa Margarita and a recent Fullerton City Council candidate pleaded guilty upon filing false affidavits attesting that they personally collected and witnessed signatures on their nomination papers. In my hometown of Anaheim, an ongoing federal investigation has led to the resignation of former mayor Harry Sidhuwho pleaded guilty to four felony charges for his role in a proposed sale of Angel Stadium to the baseball team of the same name.

Orange County “struck me as a place where a lot of elected leaders, compared to places like LA, weren’t subject to or used to as much scrutiny, attention and questioning from the media,” Gerda continued. “And a lot of things that might be questioned and noticed in a place like LA go unnoticed by the public.”

Gerda largely left Orange County politics behind when she joined LAist last spring to cover homelessness in LA County. That’s why it took him a month to return a call from a source warning him about America’s Vietnam contracts – “Actually, I almost missed the tip,” he sheepishly admitted.

State Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), left, congratulates LAist reporter Nick Gerda for his work.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

After reviewing thousands of pages of documents, Gerda published a story in November detailing how Do voted to award millions of dollars in county contracts to the Viet America Society without disclosing that it was headed by his daughter, Rhiannon.

Gerda followed a few days later with another bombshell: the supervisor’s testimony in a civil trial resulted in the trial being overturned because he failed to disclose that his wife, Cheri Pham, was an associate judge in the same court.

As a result of Gerda’s trickle of stories, Pham announced that he would not seek re-election, the county sued the Viet America Society for “eager predation” of more than $13 million, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill barring elected officials from approving contracts for organizations run by their children.

Gerda would not speculate whether his reporting was the catalyst for the federal investigation into Do. In federal court this week, the former supervisor pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery in connection with programs that receive federal funds.

“It’s true. I’m very sorry for my actions,” Do said at the hearing. “I’m responsible for every word.”

Do faces a maximum of five years in federal prison. Rhiannon Do, meanwhile, agreed to three years of probation and a diversion program, in addition to assisting the feds in their continued investigation and giving up a million-dollar home in North Tustin that prosecutors claim that he knowingly bought it with federal funds intended to feed the elderly. Vietnamese refugees.

So who will Gerda take down next?

For the first time all morning, he laughed.

“I don’t think that would have brought people down,” he said. “There are a number of other funding streams and questions about taxpayers’ money that have been intended to serve vulnerable people.”

He got up to drive back to work.

“And we continue to seek the truth.”