Longtime newspaper photojournalist dies

Published 2:30 pm Friday, March 6, 2026

PORT ANGELES — Keith Thorpe, a photojournalist and reporter who documented news, sports and feature stories on the North Olympic Peninsula for the past 30 years, has died.

He was 67.

Thorpe died Thursday in Independence, Kan., due to complications from cancer.

He is survived by his wife, Kristie Stacey of Port Angeles; stepson Quinn Stacey; three sisters, Margaret Foss of Kansas City, Kan., Katherine Powers and Elizabeth (Erick) Yeomans, both of Lee’s Summit, Mo.; aunt Priscilla Skinner of Kansas City, Kan., and numerous nieces, nephews and great-nephews.

Thorpe, who moved to Port Angeles in 1996 to work at Peninsula Daily News, was known nationally and internationally for his work with The Associated Press and other worldwide news services.

“Keith was the kind of guy that, when others would take shelter, he would run toward whatever news story that was critical to inform his community, and he was on the forefront of that,” said Eran Kennedy, publisher of the Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. “Not only did he not hang back, there was no holding him back.

“He was understated, quiet and unassuming, and for 30 years, he chronicled our daily lives.”

Thorpe played a major role in many of the top news events on the Peninsula in the past three decades, including the Makah Tribe’s whale hunt in 1999 and the shooting death of Clallam County Sheriff’s deputy Wally Davis in 2000.

“He devoted his life to document this community, and he did it very well,” said Leah Leach, who worked with Thorpe as a former executive editor for Peninsula Daily News.

The newspaper’s weeklong coverage of Davis’ murder received a C.B. Blethen Memorial Award for Distinguished Newspaper Reporting in 2001, judged by top news executives from daily newspapers outside the Northwest.

“It was probably the biggest award the paper has gotten in the past 25 years,” said former Peninsula Daily News reporter Paul Gottlieb, one of Thorpe’s colleagues.

“He was a really caring person. You just had to scratch the surface. And he was incredibly loyal to the paper.”

Kennedy recounted the story of an officer-involved shooting on May 3, 2024, outside Chase Bank in downtown Port Angeles, just a few blocks from the newspaper’s former location on West First Street.

“We were told initially there was a lockdown in the neighborhood,” Kennedy said. “Keith escaped the lockdown and ran toward what we know now as a crime scene, but at that point, we didn’t know.”

“We locked the doors, and Keith ran with his camera.”

Port Angeles police officers shot Joseph Jacob Hadden, 38, of Port Angeles, after Hadden attempted to rob the bank on West Front Street. A months-long investigation followed, and the Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office later determined the officers’ actions were justified.

“(Thorpe) was super courageous, undaunted and unfazed by any of it, whatever it was,” Kennedy said. “He was an extraordinary man, and his photography matched his character.”

Leach and Gottlieb both pointed to Thorpe’s principles as a photojournalist.

“He wouldn’t change an environment to make a photo better,” Leach said. “He always told the truth. He made sure he was always telling the truth in his photos.”

“He was really a stickler for ethics, not doctoring photos,” Gottlieb added. “He hated set-up photos. He was sticking to honest news photography, and you really value that now in the age of AI where you can just vanish people from the photo.

“He really believed in the honesty that you need for news photography.”

Leach was particularly impressed with how Thorpe covered the community during the pandemic.

“During COVID, when everyone converged on the courthouse, he was out there,” she said. “I remember going by to hand facemasks to him.

“He covered the lines for vaccinations and managed to go out and get photos when the rest of us were working from home. He was out there shooting. You can’t get a photo by the phone.

“He was very brave and dedicated with what he was doing, and very authentic.”

His wife Kristie Stacey said Thorpe was very dependable “with a heart of gold.”

“He really believed in the press and the responsibility and want it means to our country to have a free press,” she said. “Even if he’s doing small stories, he wants to be a part of it.”

In 1993, Thorpe won the Victor Murdock Medallion for excellence in investigative reporting, the highest journalism award bestowed by the Kansas Press Association, while he was working at the Atchison (Kansas) Daily Globe, Stacey said.

The story, about housing, made such an impact on the community that changes were made, she added.

“He put his career above everything, including me,” Stacey said. “I don’t say that resentfully. It was honoring who he was, and I respect that.”

Thorpe and Stacey met 9½ years ago and got married on Oct. 18, 2025, in Port Angeles.

“Even when we got married, he wouldn’t agree to an earlier wedding time,” Stacey said. “We had to push it out to 4 (p.m.) because he had a story to cover. It worked out better that way, but at time, it was like, ‘Gosh dang it, Keith.’”

Thorpe and Stacey moved to Independence, Kan., in November, about three hours from his family.

Thorpe was born in Kansas City, Kan., and spent his youth in Prairie Village and Overland Park, Kan. He moved to Colorado in his late teens.

He studied journalism at Kansas City Kansas Community College and later at Kansas University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in photojournalism from the William Allen White School of Journalism.

In addition to the Atchison (Kansas) Daily Globe, he worked at the Mitchell (S.D.) Daily Republic and The Daily Nonpareil in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

In Port Angeles, he covered the original build and the community rebuild of the Dream Playground, and he wrote annual stories on the opening of the Winter Ice Village. He also regularly covered new additions at the Feiro Marine Science Center.

He continued to work while he received chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer.

“Even when he was sick, it was very important to him to shoot as long as he could,” Leach said.

“He was a man who lived in the present, and he always took photos from his perspective and his character and his integrity because he always lived in the present,” Kennedy added.

“I’m ever so grateful that we have the legacy of his work.”

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Editor Brian McLean can be reached by email at brian.mclean@peninsuladailynews.com.