Beloved, Longtime Reporter Dies After Cancer Battle

Kim Smith, a veteran reporter adored by her colleagues, family and friends, died Tuesday after a courageous, year-and-a-half-long battle with cancer.

"In the years she spent covering the stories of Will County, Kim Lee Smith wrote about everything from school board elections to Asian carp to murder mysteries," said the story on Smith's passing in the Herald-News, the paper she worked for since 1995.

"Smith, known as 'Momma Kim' by some of her younger co-workers, spent years covering the Lincoln-Way area — New Lenox, Frankfort, Mokena and Manhattan — before later covering the Wilmington area," according to The Herald-News story.

Charles B. Pelkie, the spokesman for Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, worked with Smith at the Herald-News from 1998 to 2006.

"Having worked in newsrooms for 20 years, they can breed some of the most cynical, cutthroat people on the face of the planet," Pelkie said, according to the Herald-News.

"But that was never Kim,” Pelkie said. “She was one of the kindest people I ever met."