are tougher, stronger, and many of them are antibiotic resistant. >> narrator: the story of how noah cratenot so sick from salmonella actually starts more than a decade ago here in portland, oregon, 1,000 miles from where noah lives. >> it's part of the outbreak investigation. >> narrator: it was the summer of 2004 when oregon health officials noticed that patients were showing up in hospitals with a particularly virulent strain of salmonella. >> how many cases we have had... >> narrator: it was a strain they didn't know much about. >> we started looking at cases of salmonellheidelberg, and there was a particular pattern that we were very interested in. >> narrator: emilio debess investigates foodborne outbreaks for the oregon health department. he and his small team keep a close eye on reports from local hospitals, tracking trends in food poisonings, trying to identify the food source that made people sick. >> is it hard to track these things down? >> it's difficult to try to figure out how outbreaks happen. >> narrator: many leads go nowhere. most investigations are never solved. but as c