Kelly Puente is a general assignment and special projects reporter at the Long Beach Post. She’s covered everything from crime to breaking news, higher education and city hall. She started her journalism career in 2006 at the Press-Telegram before going to the OC Register in 2013. Her reporting has taken her all over Southern California, even to the small Catalina Island town of Two Harbors. The Post recently sent her to Washington, D.C. for a political feature and where she was able to run into some of the who’s who in politics at the popular drinking hole Off The Record. She is working on getting her master’s in public policy and administration from Cal State Long Beach, where she previously earned her bachelor’s degree. She has amassed quite a collection of Tiki mugs and hopes to visit as many Tiki bars as humanly possible. As a child she lived all over the country due to the nature of her father’s work, but for the last several years she has called Long Beach her home. Reach her at [email protected].