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London 2012: The Summer Olympics
4:11 pm
Mon May 7, 2012

Soccer Star With Soap Opera Roots Aims At Olympics

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Credit Joern Pollex / Getty Images
North Korea's Yu Jong Hui (left) and Colombia's Orianica Velasquez battle for the ball during the FIFA Women's World Cup on July 6, 2011, in Bochum, Germany.
Credit Jessica Naudziunas for NPR
Straight From Bogota: Orianica Velasquez is a junior at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Credit Mike Dickbernd / Indiana University Athletics
Orianica Velasquez leads Indiana against Michigan State on Oct. 16, 2011. This summer, she hopes to lead Colombia's national team to an Olympic medal.
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Originally published on Tue May 8, 2012 5:26 am

Indiana University soccer star Orianica Velasquez is on a mission — to get to the London Olympics with Colombia's women's soccer team. And she wants to send a message about the country where she was born.

"My dream is to get a medal for Colombia," she says, adding that she wants to show the world "it's just not violence, it's just not drugs — we can play soccer and we can do great things because we have great people there."

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The Salt
3:21 pm
Wed April 4, 2012

Milk Not Jails Makes Partners Out Of Farmers And Ex-Cons

Credit Jim Commentucci / The Post-Standard /Landov
A dairy farmer drives some of his Holstein cows out to pasture in the Madison County, N.Y. town of Lenox.
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What's plentiful in upstate New York? Cows and prison inmates, to name a few things.

Reformists in the two communities don't make natural allies, but organizer Lauren Melodia is trying to do just that.

"I was living in this prison town, and at the same time, the dairy industry was in a lot of turmoil," Melodia tells The Salt. "We thought this [dairy] might be the perfect ally in trying to build a different economy in upstate New York, and shift some of the economic dependency away from the prison system."

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