Valeria Godines covers news features as a reporter on the People Team at the Orange County Register, where she has worked since 1999. Godines is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and has worked at numerous papers including the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and the Daily Texan. She received the 1997 California Newspaper Publisher Association award for enterprise/investigative reporting for a three-part series on Riverside County's restaurant inspection process. She speaks fluent Spanish.