Ray Chavez

Ray Chavez is a Bay Area News Group photographer for The Mercury News and East Bay Times. Ray was hired as Lab Tech at the Oakland Tribune in 1994 and was later promoted to full-time staff photographer for the Alameda Newspapers Group, now the Bay Area News Group. Chavez,a native of Mexico City, has won multiple awards, including Photographer of the Year for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists Chi-Sigma-Delta, Headliners Award and the Ruben Salazar Award, among others. Ray was part of the team with the East Bay Times that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for coverage of the "Ghost Ship" fire. In 2019, he was part of a Bay Area News Group and Chico Enterprise Record team whose coverage of the Camp Fire was recognized as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the Breaking News category. Ray enjoys the outdoors and covering assignments rain or shine everywhere in the great San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Si Se Puede!