Ann-Eve Pedersen, former journalist and educational attorney in Tucson, dies aged 55 | Local news



Ann-Eve Pedersen


Submitted photo, 2016

Pedersen, who was born in Tucson and graduated from Salpointe Catholic High School before attending the prestigious Brown University in Rhode Island, began her journalistic career in the late 1980s as a news assistant at Tucson Citizen. A month or two later the editors gave her a chance to write a story.

“When she did one, they asked her to do more,” said Eckerstrom, who met Pedersen when she was reporting in court and he was a young lawyer. He is now Chief Judge of the Second Division of the Arizona Court of Appeals, which covers Tucson and southern Arizona.

Pedersen also covered the Tucson City Council facing the daunting challenge of keeping up with the star’s longtime City Hall reporter Joe Burchell.

“I went up against a bunch of Citizen reporters covering the local government … and they were the best, head and shoulders,” recalled Burchell, who retired in 2015.

In the early 1990s, Pedersen tossed their competition through the hall – Star and Citizen had newsrooms on opposite sides of a sprawling factory on South Park Avenue for decades.

“She was a great reporter, so we stole her from the Citizen,” said former star reporter and assistant city editor Mary K. Reinhart.

After a few years of reporting, Pedersen joined the town clerk alongside Diane Luber and later Maureen O’Connell Reinhart. In 1997 she was promoted to city editor.

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