AP Mexico and Central America correspondent Olga Rodriguez to join San Francisco bureau

Olga Rodriguez, a Mexico and Central America correspondent for The Associated Press for more than a decade, is joining the news organization's San Francisco bureau.

Rodriguez will be the bureau's night breaking news staffer, reporting on Northern California spot news as it develops, AP West Editor Traci Carl said Wednesday. Rodriguez starts Oct. 2.

"Olga is a steady hand in breaking news, and she knows how to get the most important details of any big story," said Carl, who supervises AP news reports for 13 states and worked with Rodriguez in Mexico City.

Among her assignments in Mexico, Rodriguez wrote extensively about illegal immigration, drugs and environmental issues along the border.

For the past seven years, Rodriguez has been based in Mexico City, covering elections in Central America and other stories. For nearly two years, she has worked on the evening desk where she edited and translated copy, and covered breaking news. Among her scoops was the first report that a missing shipment of radio-active cobalt-60 had been found.

While studying at the University of California, Berkeley ,where she earned master's degrees in journalism and Latin American studies, Rodriguez worked as an intern and stringer for the AP's San Francisco bureau and briefly as a fulltime reporter and desk supervisor. She is a Los Angeles native and earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California, graduating magna cum laude in international relations.