LOLA ALMUDEVARwas a BBC journalist who died in a car crash in Bolivia on 25 November, 2007, aged 29.
She was in a taxi on her way to cover the ongoing and bloody unrest in the city of Sucre when the vehicle collided with two trucks that had already crashed just south of La Paz. Four other people, including both lorry drivers, also died in the accident and several more people were injured.
Ms Almudevar joined the BBC in 2002 and, after working for BBC Midlands, had begun covering the increasing political and economical tensions in the South American country.
Lola Stoppleman de Almudevar was born in Nottingham on 28 June, 1978. Her father was a Spanish Catholic and her mother a British Jew. She studied at Leeds University where she became one of the many successful journalists to begin their career on the Leeds Student newspaper.
She graduated in 1999 and moved to Brussels to work for the European Union. Later that year she was awarded the Heinz-Schwarzkopf Foundation's Young European of the Year prize for promoting “understanding among the youth from different cultures” and “her commitment for peaceful, tolerant coexistence among all the peoples of Europe” through her journalism.
She began working for BBC Midlands in 2002, making documentaries for evening news programme Midlands Today and magazine programme Inside Out. In 2006 she and Brady Haran won an award for their 10-part docu-soap series about the residents of a Wolverhampton street, Alexandra Road.
That year she also took a sabbatical travelling round South America, eventually settling in Bolivia in the spring of 2007. She had been working there since, producing pieces for the BBC World Service on issues such as abandoned children, the drugs trade and the Bolivia's outspoken socialist president Evo Morales.
Journalist Jim Schultz, who had also been working in Bolivia, said Ms Almudevar was "one of the best young foreign journalists I have met here". He added: "Her style of journalism did not involve sitting in the capital waiting for news to trickle out from official sources. She traveled deeper and more often into the heart of the country than almost any journalist I have met here."
A statement from the BBC said: "Lola was only 29 years old and had been making a major impression on everyone who'd heard her lively and original journalism. She was building a great reputation and will be terribly missed by us all."
David Holdsworth, the BBC's Head of Regional and Local Programmes in the West Midlands, said: "Lola was an extremely talented young journalist who was passionate about storytelling. She will be hugely missed by all her colleagues in the Midlands, where she had many friends. She lit up lives wherever she went."
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