Today's headlines:
- WA election officials work with law enforcement to investigate how a box of unopened ballots ended up behind a dumpster.
- Spokane sheriff, federal law enforcement believe that gang members have been trafficking guns across state lines to youth in Spokane County.
- The race for Spokane County Prosecutor widens to include Independent Danielle Tarkenton.
- WA asparagus growers say labor is hard to find as immigration crackdown continues.
- Egypt’s national team has chosen Spokane as its base camp during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Plus, according to research out of the University of Washington, more than two in five agricultural workers are living with long COVID. But getting the care they need is complex and expensive. SPR’s rural affairs reporter and Murrow News Fellow Monica Carrillo-Casas shares the second of her three part series made possible by the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Commonwealth Fund.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting contributed by Sarah Mizes-Tan, Eliza Billingham, Owen Henderson, Steve Jackson and Monica Carrillo-Casas.
Owen Henderson hosts and produces the show. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Tuesday, April 21, 2026.
On today’s show, a box of unopened, empty ballots wound up by a dumpster. Washington law enforcement and elections officials are working together to investigate why.
And Spokane will play host to one of the world’s best soccer players in the lead up to the FIFA World Cup this summer.
Plus, SPR’s Murrow News Fellow Monica Carrillo-Casas brings us part two of our series on the disproportionate impact of long COVID on Latino farmworkers.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
Washington elections officials are working with law enforcement to investigate how a box of unopened ballots ended up behind a dumpster in Renton.
State Government reporter Sarah Mizes-Tan has more.
SARAH MIZES-TAN: Officials say ballots do sometimes go missing though it’s rare. Here’s Halei Watkins with King County Elections.
HALEI WATKINS: “It feels very reminiscent of almost every even year election, after ballots go out, we hear a few reports from folks where, like, mail was stolen and ballots were found in a ditch.”
SMT: The three hundred and eighty abandoned ballots found earlier this year were from elections spanning 2022 to 2025.
Those ballots were mostly addressed to people who used mailboxes in storefronts, like Amazon or UPS package lockers. None of the ballots were filled out.
Prominent vote-by-mail critic and Republican leader Jim Walsh says the incident represents a breach in security.
In Olympia, I’m Sarah Mizes-Tan.
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OH: Local and federal law enforcement say gang members have been trafficking guns to youth in Spokane County.
SPR’s Eliza Billingham has more on the arrest of five people connected to a shooting in Spokane last year.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: Last April, police gathered evidence from a double homicide at a Maverik gas station in north Spokane to trace where the shooter had gotten his gun.
A yearlong investigation by local agencies and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found what they believe to be an interstate system of weapons trafficking between members of the Indian Pride Organization Blood gang.
One member, Ryder Robison, was arrested in eastern Montana. Officers believe he bought guns legally, then turned and sold them illegally to juvenile gang members in Washington.
In Spokane, Quentin Hutchison, Owen Neeson-Graham, Ethin Rettkowski and Dylan Doughty were also arrested last Thursday on weapons trafficking conspiracy charges.
Hutchison was the person who fatally shot a rival gang member at Maverik last year. Those charges were dismissed due to a self-defense claim.
Rettkowski and Doughty had been convicted of weapons offenses as juveniles and served the maximum one-year sentence.
Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels blamed Washington state law for gangs’ increased pressure on young men.
JOHN NOWELS: “Gangs are constantly recruiting juveniles now because they know that the state of Washington is not going to hold juveniles accountable in a way that's going to change behavior.”
EB: Nowels said the IPO Blood gang has been operating for at least ten years in Spokane. He says it’s one of at least 15-20 gangs in the region, which often mix races and ethnicities.
I’m Eliza Billingham, reporting.
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OH: The field of candidates to be Spokane County’s top attorney is getting wider.
Gonzaga Law alum and Army National Guard veteran Danielle “Danny” Tarkenton announced yesterday she’ll be running for County Prosecutor as an Independent.
She’ll be challenging Republican incumbent Preston McCollam.
He was appointed last summer by County Commissioners after the retirement of longtime Prosecutor Larry Haskell.
Assistant Washington Attorney General Steve Garvin had challenged McCollam to replace Haskell last year and also says he plans to run this fall as a Republican.
Candidate filing in Washington begins in May.
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Washington’s asparagus harvest is underway, but producers say the federal immigration crackdown is affecting their ability to find workers.
SPR’s Steve Jackson reports:
STEVE JACKSON: Alan Schreiber leads the Washington Asparagus Commission.
He says the labor-intensive cutting and packing requires about 2,000 people during the 70-day spring harvest season.
Schreiber says the immigration crackdown has made it more difficult for him to find enough workers on his own this year. So he turned to a labor contractor:
ALAN SCHREIBER: “When I hire a labor contractor, it costs me an additional 11 to 12% on my labor costs, so using a labor contractor is expensive, but it allows me to harvest my crop.”
SJ: Schreiber says he’s not aware of any immigration raids in Washington’s asparagus-growing regions so far.
But he says workers are definitely worried about the prospect of a crackdown.
He says Washington’s peak asparagus harvest was 100 million pounds, back in 1990.
But since then, the crop has dwindled because of high labor costs and imports. Last year’s crop was about 13.5 million pounds.
I’m Steve Jackson, reporting.
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OH: One of the best soccer players in the world will prepare for the World Cup in Eastern Washington.
Egypt’s national team has chosen Spokane as its base camp for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Its captain, Mohamed Salah, is widely regarded as one of the best footballers currently playing, and he’ll train at Gonzaga University leading up to group stage matches in Seattle.
He’s scored more than 200 goals for Liverpool FC in England’s Premier League.
Egypt’s choice was leaked in documents submitted to City Council by the Spokane Police Department.
Law enforcement is asking for new drones and vehicle mitigation equipment to up security at Gonzaga.
So far, the city of Spokane hasn’t commented publicly about hosting the Egyptian team.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
For Latino farmworkers across the U.S., trauma and inequities have long been part of daily life, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, many are left confronting long COVID, a condition that’s been difficult to diagnose and treat.
SPR’s rural affairs reporter and Murrow News Fellow Monica Carrillo-Casas has more in part two of this three-part series.
MONICA CARRILLO-CASAS: The first time that Dr. Anita Chopra had a long COVID patient, she cried.
It was two years after the pandemic, she says, when the once-healthy patient described symptoms of weakness, chronic fatigue and frequently forgetting daily activities.
ANITA CHOPRA: “I still see him. He’s in his late forties, but the amount of change he dealt with, the challenges he's still struggling with are just overwhelming.”
MCC: Chopra’s a lead physician at the University of Washington Medicine’s Long COVID clinic, based at the Harborview Medical Center.
She is also a primary care provider at the university’s primary care center in Shoreline.
Researchers and physicians, like Chopra, say they’re still working to understand the long-term effects of COVID-19 and who is most affected.
She says she’s starting to see a broader pattern in which communities—like Latino farmworkers—are hit hard by the virus.
At UW Medicine, medical researcher Leo Morales has been studying how long COVID is showing up in those communities.
According to his research, more than two in five agricultural workers are living with long COVID.
That’s one of the highest rates among occupations studied.
And overall, more than one in three Latinos report long COVID, which is the highest rate among racial groups studied.
Morales says early gaps in vaccine access and vaccine hesitancy both played a role in those disparities.
LEO MORALES: “The best way to prevent long COVID is to prevent COVID in the first place and vaccines are an important strategy.”
MCC: At the only long COVID clinic in Washington State, Dr. Kendl Sankary, says the waitlist is long, and the diagnosis process depends on the person.
Sankary says she’s had multiple patients who have worked with a primary care doctor and actually gotten to the point of at least suspecting long COVID as the diagnosis within a couple of months—meaning they could get the necessary referral for the UW clinic.
KENDL SANKARY: “And then I have other patients where they've been dealing with these symptoms for four years and haven't come to a clear diagnosis until they're able to get into our clinic.”
MCC: For farmworkers, the referral and waitlists isn't the only issue. Geography also plays a role.
Many farmworkers live in central and eastern Washington, far from Seattle, where the clinic is based.
For a long period, referrals were limited to King County, further restricting access, Sankary says.
KS: “Which is unfortunate because I know the rates are higher in that group.”
MCC: Beyond distance, a 2025 report from the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that about 40% of farmworkers lack health insurance.
Chopra says she dedicates one day a week to long COVID patients and sees about six people.
Only about six percent of her patients have been Latino.
Sankary, who sees about 16 patients a week, says she also sees very few Latino patients.
Both providers say awareness and working conditions are part of the gap.
In rural communities, people may not recognize long COVID symptoms, or get referred for care at all.
Chopra calls delays in diagnosis among Latino farmworkers a “social determinant of health,” shaped largely by their work.
AC: “They work in eastern Washington. It is very dry. They can manifest as asthma, shortness of breath. Sometimes they can have chest pain. Sometimes, some of them experience heart racing for no reason. That impact of COVID on their lungs makes them more susceptible to the dry condition and all the dust that they are inhaling.”
MCC: But Chopra says their working conditions also raise a key question: Could pesticide exposure be to blame?
AC: “What we see in patients is some of them have pre-existing asthma and that can become exacerbated after long COVID. Or some patients who come in, they don't have any history of asthma, but now they have symptoms. So is this pesticide exposure? If they have reactive airways or new onset of asthma, then pesticides can add to it, which is why we will get a chest X-ray and will refer them for lung function testing. But certainly pesticide exposure can superimpose on the already irritated lungs.”
MCC: Sankary says that for farmworkers, additional testing is important to determine whether symptoms match a clinical diagnosis, such as pesticide exposure.
She says this is important because long COVID is often diagnosed based on symptoms alone.
Still, Chopra says farmworkers often push through symptoms like fatigue, shortness of breath, and chest pain because that’s what the work demands.
And for many, taking time off to see a doctor just isn’t an option.
AC: “These patients are working and sometimes the only working member in the family, so they feel like they have to keep on working and try to ‘tough it out.’”
MCC: And unfortunately, she says, with long COVID, there is no such thing. Her first long COVID patient four years ago is a textbook case.
I’m Monica Carrillo-Casas reporting.
OH: This story is made possible by the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Commonwealth Fund.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Sarah Mizes-Tan, Eliza Billingham, Steve Jackson, Monica Carrillo-Casas and me, Owen Henderson.
I’m also your host and producer. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
Thanks for listening.
It’s SPR.
