Prior to that she worked at the Riverside Press Enterprise, as well as newspapers in northern Virginia and the Philadelphia area. She has written thousands of stories over 30 years, covering everything from City Hall to courts to cops to food reviews, travel pieces and features. Several of her stories can be found on Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism website, selected as examples of exemplary narrative journalism. One story she wrote inspired readers to donate more than $500,000 to the Red Bucket horse rescue, enabling them to buy their own ranch. Basheda also won dozens of awards from the Orange County Press Club, as well as a California Newspaper Publishers Association public service award for an investigative series on nursing homes. She was a journalism instructor