Travis Lupick's story about chronic offender Chris Trotchie was unlike anything else ever written about an ex-inmate in B.C.

This wasn't an article about a man who had made an amazing transformation and was doing something wonderful. Nor was it the usual impersonal tale of a criminal causing havoc after leaving a penitentiary.

Instead, Lupick described in detail how Trotchie, 27, left Surrey Pretrial with "$30 in his pocket, a garbage bag half full of clothes, and a bus ticket that got him to a friend's place".

Entitled "Former inmate shares his story of B.C. prisons' revolving doors", Lupick's piece revealed that Trotchie didn't have access to his psychiatric medicines after leaving jail, where he had been held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.

It was the first time in 15 years that Trotchie was free for the Christmas holidays. And he explained how much of a struggle it was for him to avoid ending up back behind bars.

Trotchie's father offered this chilling comment to Lupick: "When Christopher gets out of jail, I can't watch the news. I don't want to hear that my son got killed or something. I'm scared of it."

Last night, Lupick won a Jack Webster Award for Excellence in Legal Journalism for his article, which revealed gaping holes in services for former inmates.

Another Straight article by Daniel Wood, "Can grizzly bear watchers end B.C.'s trophy hunt", was a runner-up for the Jack Webster Award for Science, Technology, Health & Environment.

The annual awards are named after former television and radio broadcaster Jack Webster, a.k.a. the Oatmeal Savage, whose lively journalism captivated British Columbians for decades.