LOS ANGELES, USA: One of American journalism's best-known parents of a child with autism - Frank del Olmo, an associate editor and columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a major voice for Latinos in California - died on February 19 of an apparent heart attack after collapsing in his office at The Times. He was 55.

Del Olmo was pronounced dead shortly after noon at Good Samaritan Hospital near downtown Los Angeles.

In announcing Del Olmo's death to the newspaper's staff, the managing editor, Dean Baquet, said that Del Olmo had been "one of the most beloved and valued members of the Los Angeles Times family."

Del Olmo shared a 1984 Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service for the series "Southern California's Latino Community."

"He fought quiet but effective battles inside the paper and out when he felt the Latino community was being wronged or ignored," said Hector Tobar, a Times correspondent in Buenos Aires who had known Del Olmo 16 years. "There are few Latino reporters who have worked at The Times over the past 20 years who are not indebted to him in one way or another."

Del Olmo was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University in 1987-88 and was inducted into the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' Hall of Fame in 2002. In 1972, he was a founding member of the California Chicano News Media Association. He also won an Emmy Award for writing "The Unwanted," a 1975 documentary on illegal immigration.

Among his most notable Los Angeles Times columns were the 10 he wrote about his son, Frankie, who is autistic. In 1995, when Frankie was three, Del Olmo began an annual accounting during the Christmas season of his and his wife Magdalena's attempts to understand autism and help their son.

In the first of these, Del Olmo wrote that their "disciplined teamwork" would sometimes waver. "That's when the sorrow rises to the surface," he wrote. "Then all we can do is dwell on our hopes and fears for a little boy with a soft, sweet smile and big brown eyes that normally sparkle with joy but sometimes glaze over in a distant stare as he is momentarily lost to us."

Father Gregory Boyle, the Eastside priest who founded Homeboy Industries, a job-training program for former gang members, said on February 20 that Del Olmo's Frankie columns had "communicated a palpable sense of hope."

"There was an ex-gang member who worked here who has a son who is autistic, and I would share Frank's pieces with him," Boyle said. "They gave him access to a world that was very confusing and difficult for him to understand."

Del Olmo's last column about Frankie, on December 21, 2003, reported that his son was doing well. arly help had aided Frankie in becoming more verbal than most who suffer from autism. But Del Olmo and his wife had been warned that puberty could be particularly difficult for autistic children, especially as they began to realize they were different.

"I have dreaded Frankie's adolescence," Del Olmo wrote. "But there is no postponing it." He said the two great gifts he could give his son "are my presence and his privacy. "And he shall have them both," Del Olmo wrote.

Besides his wife and son, Del Olmo is survived by a daughter, Valentina Marisol del Olmo; three sisters, Elisa Garcia, Teri Previtire and Margaret Maldonado; a brother, Gabriel Garcia; three nephews; and a niece. All live in the Los Angeles area.

To read previous Del Olmo articles and see a video profile of him, go to latimes.com/delolmo.

(Source: The Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2004)