Going Back

Sometimes a writer starts a story with no idea how it'll end. Like a painter, you start mixing colors - words, images - with no idea what they'll look like on the canvas.

Such is the case with this blog. I started blogging after meeting a TV producer who wants to do a show about journalists. I thought this blog would be a good way to archive some of the stories I've covered in case she might want to use them in a TV series.

Then an earthquake hit 3,000 miles from Hollywood. No red carpets. No stylists. No paparazzi.  A make-believe TV show would have to wait. 

Instead of a newsroom, the base of a mango tree became my office. Armed security for escorts. Broken, dry ground for a bed. 

I was afraid to go but I had to. I get why CBS reporter Lara Logan vows to return to reporting despite being gang-raped in Egypt; sometimes nothing can keep you from doing what you're meant to do...

I was a grad student the first time we were attacked on a story. A deranged man tried to smash our gear to the ground. We weren't hurt but we learned the camera is a magnet for nuts - and to keep an eye out for a rock if you need to defend yourself.

I thought about getting a gun permit as my assignments got more dangerous (growing up on Army bases, we were taught how early how to use weapons), especially while covering the murder of a young mother.

Two masked gunmen had burst into the offices of a gang prevention program yelling, "Give us your purses! Give us the money!"  

They shot mom of three, Christina Clegg, as she sat at her desk.

The crime was made to look like a botched payday robbery but who pumps five rounds into a mom at work?

"Get off the story," neighbors warned me, "They'll kill you, too."

I eventually got enough facts to air exclusives about a suspect police refused to name. He threatened to kill me after we ambushed him, cameras rolling, at his lawyer's office. 

I looked over my shoulder for months until police had enough evidence to arrest him.

Bastard husband. 

Grover Clegg is serving life in prison for hiring his own brother to kill his wife.  For insurance money.

And so I go back. to disaster areas. and war zones. and inner cities. Because sometimes all it takes to see justice prevail is a mic and a camera. 

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