A native of the Midwest, Mark Puente joined the Times in November 2010 and covers real estate issues as part of the Times' Business team.

Puente spent more than five years with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland where he won several journalism awards for his investigative work. The newspaper nominated him twice for the Pulitzer Prize. His reporting forced a 32-year sheriff in Ohio's largest county to resign from office in 2009 and plead guilty to theft-in-office charges. His investigative work has been recognized by the Associated Press Society of Ohio, the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The University of Colorado presented him with the Al Nakkula Award in 2010, journalism's only award devoted to police and crime reporting.

He took a different path to journalism by logging more than one million miles in the cab of a tractor-trailer over 14 years. After leaving the trucking industry, Puente earned a political science degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has a wife, and his three sons are in college. Go Tar Heels!

Phone: (727) 893-8459

E-mail: mpuente@tampabay.com

Twitter: @MarkPuente