On her return to Kumasi following the fall of the Progress Party government in 1972, Mrs. Valerie Sackey transferred to the Kumasi unit of the Department of Game and Wildlife and then on to teaching at St. Louis Secondary School in Kumasi.
During this period, she wrote on various topical issues for the Pioneer newspaper under the pen name Yaa Asantewaa. Her direct and commonsensical approach to issues gained her a wide readership in a culture prone to using euphemisms to totter around uncomfortable facts about our sociopolitical lives.
In one of these articles, she sharply criticized the manner in which the various leaders of the PNDC were going around the country harassing the people on radio and television and advised them to take a tape recorder and hear themselves speak. This drew the attention of the leader of the revolution. Flt. Lt. J. J. Rawlings, who secretly agreed with her expressed views, requested to meet her. He was, however, surprised to find that she was white.