b'Case The encouragementof SOU writing professor Craig Wright created the spark that ignited the career of journalist and true crime author Tony Adame, 01. Adame and Wright formed a bond pretty quickly, according to Adame. I remember thinking, this class is incredible, and the writing made me feel something I hadnt tapped into before, Adame said. At the end of the course, Craig pulled me aside and said that I could write as a career, that I could make money with it. No one had ever said that to me before. Adame took Wrights encouragement to heart, switching his major Tony Adames storyfrom business to English. When another professor, Lawson Inada, also told Adame that he could write as a career, Adame knew he was on the begins at SOU right path. Those guys changed my life, he said. From that point on, Adame honed his writing skills while also playing football and making lifelong friends. Although he chose SOU as a way to break free of his midwestern hometown, it exceeded his college expectations. SOU was a magical place for me, he said. I was able to figure out who I was, and the connections I made there are ones I will have for life. Theyre family for me. After graduating from SOU, Adame worked as a sports reporter at various news outlets across the country. Now living in Pensacola Beach, Florida, Adame is currently an NFL reporter for Heavy.com. He is also the author of the non-fiction, true crime book Chase the Devil: Murder and Obsession on Floridas Gulf Coast, which was released by Bloomsbury/Rowman & Littlefield in May 2025. While creating a list of unsolved crimes in the Gulf Coast region to produce evergreen news stories to fill a weekend edition in 2018, Adame stumbled across a story about the unsolved 1985 rape and murder of a local woman, Tonya Ethridge McKinley. He kept researching the case and ultimately found a clue he brought to the Pensacola Police Departments investigations unit.The lead detective on the case, Captain Chuck Mallett, had also come across the same clue around the same time and asked Adame to be part of a secret task force to catch the killer. Chase the Devil is an account of that investigation and was on Amazons True Crime bestsellers list after its release. Its Adames first book. In 2020, while working at The Northwest Florida Daily News, Adame also hosted an award winning true-crime podcast series and long-form news story called The Sheriff: Murder, Lies & Revenge in Okaloosa County.Throughout the process of writing and getting his book to publication, Adame was reminded of lessons learned in his classes with Craig Wright. One of those assignments included short stories that were shared with classmates for their feedback. Craig would tell us that when we were receiving feedback to just sit and listen, he said. Those classes taught me that when you write something and put it out into the world, it doesnt belong to you anymore. People arent always going to love everything you do. Dont take it personally. Thats an important lesson Ive taken with me throughout my career, and now with this book. THE RAIDER|FALL 202515'