Valeeya Brazile isn't around to tell her own story, which ended Feb. 5 when the 3-year-old from Fair Oaks was killed and her mother's boyfriend became the suspect, later charged, in her murder.

Instead, Marjie Lundstrom has told it for her.

The veteran Bee reporter wrote in recent weeks about the broken arm, the burn, the rib fractures and the other injuries little Valeeya suffered, and how those injuries failed to set off alarms with Sacramento County's Child Protective Services.

Working solo and later with reporting colleague Sam Stanton, who is also her husband, Lundstrom revealed that Valeeya's legal advocates were not informed of her injuries before they decided to remove court supervision of the child's welfare.

These details were not provided by an official report or investigation. They emerged through Lundstrom's persistence in obtaining records, interviewing people and doing exhaustive research.

I wanted to take note of this work because it speaks to both the value and the difficulty of journalism that goes beyond what people say to what the record shows.

We live in a time when it's fashionable to spit on reporters, literally and figuratively, and when people frustrated by what they're hearing take out that anger on "the media."

Good journalists, however, aren't just messengers: We're people and institutions who find things out on the public's behalf. This is The Bee's role in our community and in society.

As she reported on missteps and mistakes in certain cases handled by CPS, Lundstrom asked many of the questions you might pose if given the chance. She also brought knowledge and experience gained through decades of reporting and records work.

For instance, Lundstrom made use of a new state law that requires release of child welfare records for children who die. She petitioned for juvenile court records to compare them against CPS reports, which is how she spotted the information that was not shared with Valeeya Brazile's court advocates in August.

On Saturday, Lundstrom was scheduled to accept the California Newspaper Publishers Association's 2008 Freedom of Information award.

The association honored Lundstrom for a "lifelong commitment to the public's right to know," a commitment reflected in her extraordinary work on this topic and many others.

In 1991, for Gannett News Service, Lundstrom and Rochelle Sharpe reported that hundreds of child-abuse deaths were going undetected each year because of medical examiner errors. They won a Pulitzer Prize.

In her career at The Bee, Lundstrom has looked out for children through her own work as a columnist and in editing and reporting roles.

She was an assistant managing editor in 1996 when Bee reporters Cynthia Hubert, Nancy Weaver Teichert and others reported on 3-year-old Adrian Conway, who was beaten, burned, tortured and starved to death by his mother.

She returned to reporting, and early this year took up the question of how CPS was handling child-abuse cases 12 years after reforms spurred by Adrian's death.

Beginning with a two-part series in June detailing gaps in CPS oversight, Lundstrom has offered one powerful report after another.

She knows, as we all do, that child protection is a complex, difficult business. Her sister is a social worker in another state, and Lundstrom says she has "tremendous respect and admiration for what they do."

The positive aspects of their hard work don't erase the wrongs that Lundstrom has revealed, or her reasons for doing so.

"I just cannot think of anything more important than looking out for this community's children," she told me the other day.

She has done just that, for Valeeya Brazile, and for all of us.

Reach The Bee's editor, Melanie Sill, at (916) 321-1002.