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My career in the profession began at the Wildcat, the University of Arizona’s campus newspaper. Back then, editors used fat, yellow pencils to edit and pale glue to attach the pages of the story together. Campus journalism consisted of poking fun at the university president and writing about joints, long hair, and free love. Upon graduating from U of A and joining the Tucson Citizen, I discovered the real world of journalism: one phone call could retraumatize a crime victim and a single phrase could shatter a person’s career. From Arizona, I traveled to the Midwest to work for the Omaha World-Herald or Weird-Herald, as some called it. I moved to experience life outside the Southwest and journalism at a large, daily publication. The people were great, the journalism wasn’t. Next stop, The Seattle Times in the Pacific Northwest. The editors seemed stiff, but I was delighted the newspaper possessed deep pockets. I traveled regularly. Once a small plane flew me across the border into Canada, landed in the ocean, and delivered me to a vessel carrying a Brazilian stow-a-way headed for Seattle. On another occasion, I visited several cities in Mexico to report on the displacement of the poor to make room for plush tourist resorts. My greatest adventures, though, came when I was asked to cover two volcanic eruptions: El Chichon in Mexico in 1982 and Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia in 1985. The faces of the dead still haunt me. The Times turned out to be an interesting place to practice investigative reporting, too. While there, I led investigations into: school bus drivers who possessed felony and reckless-driving convictions; fire officials who used publicly owned equipment to make thousands of dollars; and dysfunctional crime laboratories nationwide. Today, my journalism revolves around mentoring students at Seattle University’s student newspaper, The Spectator, and writing for APB Online News.
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