Mean Girls

Lindsay Lohan star of "Mean Girls."  Photo:  Humza 

A talent agent told me I come off too sweet. "Too 'pink,' not enough flavor," she said. "We need to see the naughty in you."

I can hear my childhood friends roaring with laughter.  I was a mean girl long before Lindsay Lohan.  

The trouble started in 1st grade with a new kid at school.  He  didn't fit in wearing Sunday clothes to school.  He cut in line at recess. I punched him.  He socked me in the eye.

By 4th grade I'd moved on to bullying - teachers. "Hey, guppy lips!"  I taunted one who had a mouth like Mick Jagger.  

Another time Mrs. L. broke down in tears as I led a class revolt against 'the witch.' 

By high school I was hanging out with a crew of misfits who cut class and drank Mickey's in the park. 

Despite the trouble, A's came easy.  "You're going to college," my dad insisted, shipping me off to the Ivy League with the warning, "I don't do bail once you're 18."   

Later as a crime reporter, I confronted killers, gang members, sleazy politicians, with the steeliness of a true mean girl. 

Yet God - radical love - had somehow begun to pierce a hardened heart. 

Too sweet? A friend put it best: "When you're looking for a brand of 'edgy' that is filled with desperation, despondency, depression and dejection and encounter a different brand of edgy filled with love, joy and peace it's difficult to deal with." 

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I Forgive Oprah

Oprah Winfrey. Photo:  Rolling Out.

It feels like I've been away in rehab but really just reinventing myself at Hollywood's Become a Host TV coaching program.  

"We haven't had a breakthrough until someone's in tears," our coach said. 

I had a breakthrough.  I forgive Oprah.

Back when Oprah shot to fame with her Chicago-based talk show, I was an overweight Black girl on the way to becoming a newscaster; the same way Oprah got started. Given the similarities to Oprah's story, maybe the nickname was inevitable:

Little Oprah. 

I hated it.  I wanted people to view me as a serious journalist, not a daytime diva.  I wanted to cover disasters and wars;  not celebrities with egos as inflated as their paychecks.

And truthfully, Oprah's extra curvy figure wasn't...Well, like many girls, I fantasized about being the hot, thin star on those glossy magazine covers.

I stayed away from the drama of daytime talk show positions or jobs that required interviewing celebrities - leave that throne to Oprah.   

Later, after years on the crime beat, I was so hardened that our news director would send me to cover gruesome murder scenes that none of the men wanted to see.

I tried so hard to prove I was not Little Oprah that I missed my own story.

"I made a mistake," I told my coach.

"You took a different path," she replied reassuringly.

Honestly?  Oprah doesn't need my forgiveness; she's not to blame for my missed opportunities.  Sure, I still want to tell stories that set the world ablaze but now that may mean sharing the set with a celebrity or two.

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Kinky. Nappy. Frizzy.

Gabby Douglas. Photo: www.fleurdecurl.com

Gold medalist Gabby Douglas responded beautifully to haters who said her hair looked "unkempt" at the Olympics:  "I just made history and people are focused on my hair?"

I lived in Gabby's Iowa town back when I was chasing presidential candidates through cornfields for the NBC station. I covered politics but that changed the day I was sent to fill in at the murder trial for two teen brothers.

The brothers claimed they had just meant to scare the victim - chasing him with a shotgun - but a bullet had ricocheted off the ground. The courtroom drama was made-for-TV stuff.

At one point, the prosecutor grabbed the shotgun off the evidence table, aimed at the jury and cocked it.  Screams.  People ducking. Banging gavel.

The prosecutor had made his point:  Waving a gun in the air? That's scaring someone.  Pulling a trigger?  That's murder.

"You're on the crime beat now," my boss said after my stories aired to stellar ratings.

On that beat, you quickly see that weapons are more than guns and knives. Sometimes they're words...like the ones hurled at Gabby Douglas.  Meant to crush not the body, but the spirit. 

Someone needs to give her a hair intervention.  

She needs some gel and a brush.  

She needs to represent. 

Kinky. Nappy. Frizzy.  For many Black women, our hair sometimes feels like a crown of thorns.

Gabby doesn't see it that way. "It can be bald or short," she said, "it doesn't matter about (my) hair."

The name of my blog comes from a critic's comment, "Honey, blot your lips!"  We pinned up that note as a reminder to check each other's appearance before going on air.  We learned to turn meanness into motivation and garbage into gold - just like Gabby's done.

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Breaking Bad

Experts say it takes six weeks to break a habit.  I'm not battling pills or booze but I am trying to break a style picked up working the TV news crime beat. Newscasters have a distinct on-air style that's hindering me from doing more creative work - work that doesn't require covering dead bodies.

"We just need to get the newscaster out of you," TV coach Marki Costello said at our first session.  I'd called Marki after seeing her help former NFL pro Hank Baskett move from the football field to the studio.

Marki teaches the same technical skills like TelePrompter and breaking down copy that newscasters learn but in a way that fits the style of TV hosting. Hosting is a completely different beast than news; sort of like the difference between boxers and wrestlers - both compete in a ring but they need different abilities.

"Reveal something about yourself we'd never know by looking at you," Marki instructed in her Hosting Boot Camp, "to help the audience connect with you." 

Hosts share intimate secrets with their audiences; as newscasters, we're trained to hide behind the camera. Newscasters tell other people's stories, not our own.  Strip off that protective layer?  No way.  

I revealed that my military dad had me in boxing gloves before I could read. My tone conveyed my message: back off.

Next assignment was reading copy for a dating show. Marking stopped me after a few sentences demanding, "What do YOU think?"  

As news anchors, we're trained to stay out of the story; whereas hosts make money off of their opinions. 

"That petite woman who won't date tall men has no idea what she's missing!"  I blurted out. Great. Now the audience thinks I sleep with NBA players.

Then came a live co-hosting drill. In news, we face a camera - not a crowd. The live audience felt like a jury. I mumbled a few words about the topic - travel, told a story about a recent trip to a Third World country - and crept back to my seat. 

A hot guy from The Bachelorette leaned over and whispered, "Do you know you said, 'pooped in a can?'" 

Despite Marki's coaching, I felt  stuck.  Too old to change with habits too big to break. Six weeks in TV rehab?  At least there shouldn't be any dead bodies. 

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Twisted Truths: What Parents Need to Know About the Joe Paterno Child Sex Scandal

As journalists, we make a living reporting about the wreckage caused by peoples' actions, like Penn State's Joe Paterno.  

There will always be questions about why he didn't call police when he learned his assistant coach might be molesting boys.  If the allegations are true, Paterno and others did nothing while the rapes went on for years.  One of the most alarming accusations says university employees knew "Victim 8" was being assaulted in the shower but didn't call 911 because they were afraid "they might lose their jobs."

Every parent should read the grand jury report (if they can stomach the graphic content) to see how a predator got away with it for so long.  As crime reporters, we get so used to people lying to us that we always look for twisted truths.  But most parents aren't so distrusting - as seen in the grand jury report.  It reveals how parents swept suspicions aside and never seriously tried to answer disturbing questions - questions that could protect your child: 

Why does this adult give my child gifts for no reason? 

Is my child acting out when seeing this adult?

Is an adult spending odd hours with my child, like taking them out of school? 

Is something "off" about my child's appearance, like disheveled clothes or wet hair, after being with this adult?

If this scandal has a redeeming side, it's that maybe we'll be better equipped to identify predators...and also compelled to protect children - even if they're not ours.

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Most Wanted: Whitey Bulger

James "Whitey" Bulger as a young mobster

I've been mourning my losses.  Well, not exactly my losses but what could have been my gain if I'd been more observant of my neighbors.

The press is reporting that a former beauty queen named Anna will get the $2 million reward for the tip that led to the capture of mobster James "Whitey" Bulger.  Bulger, who ran the Boston Winter Hill Gang, had been on the FBI's "Most Wanted" for the murders of 19 people in the 1970's and '80's.

I walk by Bulger's apartment nearly every day on my way to the beach. The area is unremarkable except for it's proximity to the ocean; mostly 70's apartment buildings along a wide, palm tree-lined street.  

Posing as a retiree, the mob boss had been living "in plain sight," as cops put it, for more than a decade. 

Seems simple "girl talk" brought down the most wanted fugitive who'd been right up there with terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.  

"Anna had befriended Bulger's girlfriend after the two women took an interest in a stray cat," says writer Randy Economy. 

Anna turned in the 81-year-old Bulger and his girlfriend after seeing them on a TV report. She's now $2 million richer and certainly the heroine of a future movie.  The TV crews are gone for now but I'm sure they'll be back when a deal is struck. 

During the raid on Bulger's place, the FBI found a tidy nest egg stashed in the walls of his apartment, along with an arsenal of weapons.  Forget Bingo - wonder what else those retirees across the street are up to? 

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After the Vows...

Wedding day.  Photo: K. Lewis 

If marriage is God's design, why does it seem so hard to make it work? And virtually impossible in Hollywood?  

I got to thinking about this as a friend announced her engagement; the same day another friend announced her break up. 

Sadly, I've seen as many endings to marriages as beginnings.  Covering the crime beat, cops will tell you some of their riskiest responses are when one partner is trying to leave the other.

To make ends meet at my first small market TV news gig, I took a part-time job at a women's shelter.  Police brought in most victims with only their kids and the clothes on their backs.

I never got used to seeing the swollen faces, black eyes, bruises...I didn't understand how mothers stayed with men who shattered their kids' bones, or worse. 

"They feel like they have no choice," the director tried to explain, "Most go back."

Later, I was the one dialing 911 for a friend fleeing an explosive husband.  She was terrified he'd come home and find her packing. 

I'd been there when they met.  Celebrated their engagement.  Helped pick the wedding decorations.  We saw no warnings; the beatings started after the vows.  

"I'm calling the police," I said, "That'll give you time to get out."  I'd covered enough crime stories to know this one could turn fatal.

My friend's experience is common; one in four women are in abusive relationships.* The reasons a marriage goes from flowers to fists are as intricate as the lace of a wedding dress.  And love's promises - to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish...until death do us part - just as fragile. 

*Domestic Violence Resource Center www.dvrc-or.org

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She Still Stands

The LA Times is running this photo I shot outside a West Hollywood antiques store.  The owners display collectibles and old movie props  but weeks have passed without a buyer for the 8' statue.  

Just before the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, Lady Liberty reminded me...

As journalists, we make a living reporting other peoples' tragedies.  Lost lives usually mean bigger ratings; 9/11 was no exception.  Except it was our tragedy, too.  There's a saying, "History always leaves a witness."  We were all witnesses.

I lived near the Golden Gate Bridge at the time.  The area around the monument went into lockdown.  The F-14 military fighter jets flying overhead made a threat to our lives seem imminent.

Tears are of no use in the newsroom; mine would not stop.  Only one other story had hit me so hard: the crash of TWA Flight 800.  

I'd instantly felt the explosion that killed 380 people was not an accident...even before I learned that my friend, detective Sue Hill, was on board; we'd met years earlier working the same crime scenes.

No tributes mark the crash site of Flight 800.  No monuments honor the victims.  No one can prove whether a missile or mechanical failure brought down Sue's plane but I'm convinced  these tragedies five years apart - on 7/17 and 9/11 - were somehow linked. 

These lost lives remind us of the price we pay to live in a free country - by no means perfect, her leaders are often wrongly motivated; her people often selfish and arrogant.  Yet, despite terrorism, catastrophe and war, her Light still shines.  She still stands.

*"The Mysterious Death of Detective Sue Hill," The Rap Sheet, Nov 2005
http://www.portlandpoliceassociation.com/rsissues/Nov05Rap.pdf

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Stalkers

Photo:  Maybe Sparrow Photography and Design

An article about the ESPN reporter who was spied on in her hotel room infuriated me that the crime is punished so lightly.  Erin Andrews says she still gets perverted phone calls about the nude footage the stalker leaked. Fans still yell, "I've seen you naked!"

"People don't understand that while I wasn't physically touched, I was violated," Erin said in an interview.*  

I get that.

...I'm at your window. A man with a deep voice on the phone was on the other end of the phone. Lurking. Threatening.

I dialed 911 and hid in a closet until police arrived.  They looked for footprints in the snow or other signs of an intruder but found nothing.

For a while, the TV newsroom was one of the only places that felt safe to me.  Security is always tight to keep someone from hijacking a live broadcast.

Safe...until the night a man was waiting for me in the lobby.

As he came toward me, it looked like he was hiding something behind his back. Instinct said to grab the newsroom door before it shut and locked. I bolted back inside without asking any questions.

"Do you know the man in the lobby?"  I asked our producer.  The guard was supposed to notify him if a visitor came during a broadcast. The guard never did.

Who knows why the stranger showed up near midnight claiming to be my boyfriend.  He fled before police arrived. The security breach cost the guard his job but things could have been far worse. 

Erin's stalker, a salesman she had never met, got 30 months in jail .  Many stalkers never spend a day behind bars.  

And the victims?  "I'm traumatized every day," Erin says, "This will never be over."*
---
*Read Erin Andrew's Marie Claire article for advice on handling stalking

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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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The Storyteller's Calling

I was walking along the beach when I ran into a man in an orange prison jumpsuit. I was a little afraid since the shoreline was deserted except for us and a few seagulls.

Should I keep walking? Run like mad? Call 911?

You'd think living near Hollywood I'd know by now things often aren't what they seem. Turns out the "escaped convict" was an actor waiting for a camera crew.

Watching the actor, photographer and ocean move with each other was like turning the pages of a book. Storytellers - crafting lines with images instead of words.

In my mind the beach melted away and I was back in Haiti where I'd write sitting under the mango tree. This is where I finally got it: for some of us storytelling is a calling, not merely a job.

"The times when I got to uncover someone's story," said Kezia, "when I got to ask questions and discover something I would not have known had I not hunted for it, those are the things that moved me."

Watching the story being written on the shore stirred something in me. The calling. Yes, it's still there.

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Haiti Film Underway!

Actor Nikki Storm prepares to film a scene in "Eyes to See" at Blue Cloud Ranchi

Filming has started on the movie inspired by our Haiti team! Eyes to See stars Matthew Marsden (Rambo and Transformers) and Garcelle Beauvais, a native Haitian known (NYPD Blue, Franklin & Bash).  The film is about a photographer forced to choose between doing his job and helping people after the earthquake.

Nine months after the disaster, orphanage workers tell us the children are coping despite immense suffering. Grief though, finds a way to assert itself. unstoppable tears. pain. anger.

Grief still feels foreign to me.  Being a reporter demands staying emotionally disconnected in order to handle the violence and death of the lens through which we see the world. 

A few years ago the news reported that a mom had thrown her three babies into the San Francisco Bay. The tide swept away the tiny bodies before anyone could save them.  Divers were searching by the Golden Gate Bridge near where I lived at the time.

I walked the Bay half-hoping to find a miracle. "God, you've made me unfit for news," I wept. Away from the crime beat, I was discovering tears I'd never shed no matter how many murders I saw.

Today I was thinking about something a friend wrote while keeping vigil at his dad's bedside. "Jesus wept," he'd written, "but not tears of despair."  

Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the Bible. 

And a thought came to me that made grief ok: sometimes tears precede miracles.

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Justice of the Heart


A friend sent me a casting notice for a movie about a serial killer based on true events. I never imagined the possibility of auditioning for the role of a TV newscaster would reveal the ending to a real life case.

Friends have suggested I write books about the murder cases I've covered but the idea never appealed to me; maybe because there aren't any happy endings.  "You go on but you can't forget the things you saw," said my mother.  Can't forget the victims - or the killers.

No Movie Script
I wish it had just been a movie when my TV station sent me to cover the murder of a nurse named Martha Bryant who'd been attacked driving home from work.  The horrific killing rocked a quiet Oregon town. 

I can't forget police describing how the killer tried to rape her: "When he realized she was of no use to him sexually due to her injuries, he executed her."  Shot her point blank in the head in the back seat of his car.

Police began to suspect a soft-spoken family man who lived nearby. My cameraman and I went to his house to interview him but workers were tearing it down.  Someone had torched it. 

"Found this," a worker handed me a charred slip of paper, "don't know if it means anything."

Chills ran through me after one glance. It was a search warrant showing cops were looking for possessions of a dozen women in the man's house. 

If my hunch was right, police thought he may have killed before. Many times.

Phone calls confirmed the women listed in the search warrant were either missing or dead. The trail of possible victims ran from Florida to Oregon. 

I went on the air with the exclusive report that a serial killer might be at work. Police asked a judge to have me arrested for illegal possession of the warrant because I refused to reveal how I got it.  

Until now.

Cesar Barone eventually went on trial for Martha's murder and more. I sat behind him at the defense table every day in court.  During a break, he spoke to me for the first time. "Can you do me a favor?" he asked. "Can you check on my dogs?"

I never aired his comment; seemed too cruel to the victims' families.  Never aired his wife's story either; she'd met Barone a decade earlier through a personal ad.  She had no idea she'd fallen in love with a serial killer.

No Hollywood Ending
Today I learned Barone is dead.  Died on death row at 49 still insisting he was innocent (crime writer Anne Rule wrote a book about him but he never gained the notoriety of his former Florida cellmate, Ted Bundy).

I wish it had been a movie and the director would say, "Cut!" but there's no tidy Hollywood ending for Barone's wife and kids or his victims. 

But maybe life scored justice in the end:  Barone died of a cancerous tumor wrapped around his heart.

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Storytellers

It's an overused but true saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Every TV writer's heard a million times, "Write to video." 

I know when I truly got what that means.

I'd written a lead story about an illegal, multistate puppy mill ring. Our news director tore up my script. 

"See these images?" he said, cuing up shots of sad puppies whimpering behind chain link fencing. "Start here. Then go into this sound bite."

He showed me how to turn a good story into an extraordinary one; not being exploitive but using the full impact of the visual medium.  

He also gave me my first big breaks: the anchor desk, top story live shots (threatening to fire me if I screwed up), network stories.

He could be a tyrant, too. When a childhood friend's mom died, he told me not to come back if I left during a critical news time. I walked out, driving six hours in a blizzard to get to the funeral.

He called a few days later demanding to know why I wasn't at work. "You fired me," I said. "Show up," he said. It was his way of saying, "You're still on the team." 

That year we took the station to first in the ratings for the first time in 40 years.

He was fiercely competitive but taught me to use that drive to dig beyond surface facts. He denied me only one title: war correspondent. Despite the risk, I'd wanted to cover history from Iraq's frontlines.

Eventually I'd go to the frontlines of war zones of a different kind - inner cities, disaster zones, Haiti...

Storytellers.  We see the risk, but we also see the chance to tell history. See those images? Start there.

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No Ordinary Life

Nurse Kerry jumped on a plan with only hours notice to return to Haiti

Received a distressing message today from a relief team nurse who just flew back to Haiti to help at the orphanage clinic we set up after the earthquake. Aftershocks had forced them to evacuate.

"All the children woke up, fear was within each of them," Kerry said. They'd been outside all night, most of the children too hurt to go anywhere else.

Each time the ground shakes in Haiti, it shakes in my heart.  Images run through my mind. A starving baby asleep in my arms. Sick orphans huddled on the wet ground.

I keep having a dream that I'm trying to drive my car to Haiti but a tidal wave blocks my way.

Some of my teammates returned to Haiti with only hours notice to help expand the clinic at New Life Children's Home thanks to the donation of a large UNICEF tent.  We call the clinic "Wimmer's Wing" after EMT Sarah Wimmer who stayed behind to help run it.

I expected those middle-of-the-night phone calls as a TV news crime reporter. The overnight producer would give me just enough details to throw on clothes and get out the door. Shooting. Northeast. Multiple fatalities.  

Even after leaving the crime beat, I still carry a backpack of clothes in my trunk...

As I look at how the story of my life has unfolded - from the viewer who sent a Kleenex with the snarky advice, "Honey, blot your lips," to Hollywood to Haiti - I've come to see that I'm not meant to live an ordinary life...even if that means crossing the ocean on a moment's notice simply to go hold a child's hand.

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Saving Lives in Haiti

Just now able to get out my first post since arriving in Haiti. This is from an article for a London publication.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Transformational Development Agency's team has just left an area of Port-au-Prince where a family asked them to help recover the bodies of three loved ones buried under their house when it collapsed in the January 12th earthquake.

There is nothing the team or anyone else can do to remove the thousands of pounds of rubble without the heavy equipment still needed to clear much of Haiti's ruins.

Since Sunday, TDA's 40-member team, comprised mostly of doctors, nurses, paramedics and EMT's, has been performing surgeries and other medical procedures on victims severely injured in the earthquake that killed more than 150,000 people. "Initially you just try to stop the bleeding," said Los Angeles, California paramedic Dane Melberg. "Then you go from there."

Despite initial safety concerns, the team has not encountered any violence, nor have they seen riots over food shortages, corpses left to burn in the streets, or machete-wielding gangs looting properties as portrayed in the media.

Touring some of Haiti's most heavily damaged towns today, the team is finding that critical medical needs are stabilizing. Dr. Ian Armstrong, a California neurosurgeon, credits his colleagues with saving lives that would otherwise be lost more than two weeks after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

Armstrong said the intervention of one of TDA's doctors meant the difference between life and death for a one-year-old boy named Jerry suffering from a possible skull fracture.

"She absolutely saved that boy's life," he said of Dr. Jolie Pfaler of St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California. Pfaler found that the boy had never been x-rayed or assessed and was able to get him immediate surgery at the main tent hospital at Port-au-Prince airport.

"Haiti destroyed."
Amidst the tragedy in Haiti, the team celebrated reuniting one of its members with his family, whom he'd not seen since before the earthquake. Edison Senat traveled with TDA from the United States to serve as an interpreter.

On January 12th, he had received a text message from his father: "Haiti destroyed," it said. "We had a terrible earthquake." While several friends and two cousins were killed, Senat was able to hug his three sisters for the first time in nearly a year when they were able to meet him at a TDA medical clinic.  "I know God protected my family," Edison said.

not just broken bones
TDA's team includes several non-medical volunteers as well. They have been instrumental in offering comfort and encouragement to earthquake victims, particularly orphaned children.

Bree Bailey, a Production Manager at California's Lionsgate Studios, said she came on the trip because, "A doctor may come here and fix a child's broken bone, you may come here and fix a child's broken heart."

TDA team leader Rikki Alakija is already looking to future involvement in Haiti as the country begins the long rebuilding process. He plans to bring construction teams within the next month or two and expects TDA to help develop employment opportunities to help those left jobless as a result of the quake.

As the team prepares to return to the United States, Alakija summed up their feelings, saying, "When everybody leaves here, they will take a little bit of Haiti with them and leave a little bit of themselves in Haiti."

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Fifteen Seconds

Haiti rescue efforts AP photo

As reporters leaving on dangerous assignments, we'd half-jokingly say, "Make sure I get my 15 seconds." 

See, a dead journalist is worth about 15-seconds on network news. Even though it could cost our lives, we were compelled to tell the story...just like now with Haiti.

As journalists, we learn to tell history in seconds. In 15 seconds, an earthquake flattens a nation. an assassin's bullet slays a civil rights leader. a levee breaks. a wall falls. a plane topples a tower.

But I'm Miss Hollywood now. I cover red carpets and wear lipstick. I'm not cut out for sleeping in the dirt and eating cold soup from a tin can.

Yet, something whispers that I was created to walk among the ruins, to comfort orphans, to hold the dying.

Yes, we're afraid for our safety. The head of the medical team I'm traveling with told reporters: "We know we're going into a dangerous situation, but people are dying because nobody is there to help."

Dying now not from injuries but simply because they need water. In an age of wireless networks, 3D and satellite, we can't get a drink to a thirsty child.

At first, I didn't want to go...fear. horrific conditions. overwhelming sense of futility. But as I told friends, "This is a moment in history in which I've been invited to play a role. How can I say no any longer?"

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Katie, Come Home

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions but sometimes I make wishes.  This year I wish Katie would come home.

I started blogging because of Katie - her and others whose stories I've covered. I decided to record some of them in case I wanted to use the material to write a TV show about journalists.

Sometimes I feel like Haley Joel Osment's character in the The Sixth Sense. "I see dead people," the boy tells a shrink (Bruce Willis). While I don't actually see dead people, I can't forget names and faces, like Katie's.

Katie Eggleston, a recent college grad with surfer girl looks, was excited to start her first job at Allnet in Portland. It was the last day anyone saw her.

Police found Katie's car near the airport with her purse inside.  Investigators somehow concluded she'd run away with a lover.  I didn't get it - what 20-something woman runs off without her lipstick?


Katie's missing person's flyer

Still, cases grow cold quickly without solid leads. I kept in touch with Katie's parents as tips surfaced but eventually lost contact.

I recently found an old letter from Katie's parents. "We want to let you know how much we appreciate the straightforward reporting you did regarding Katie's disappearance," Katie's mom had written me about her missing child.

I knew I had to tell Katie's story again.  Maybe one day someone will come forward with a clue that sheds light on her disappearance.

A while ago Katie's friend posted a message in the paper in case she's alive: "Katie, it's okay, you can come home now."*

So that's my wish. Katie, come home.

*Bend Bugle, 5/4/2001 

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Superheroes

Tobey McGuire stars as "Spiderman."  Photo: Oh My Magazine

"Can you be at the casting studio at 2:30?" my agent asked. "Sure," I said. Checking my email, I saw a problem.  The director wanted to see tall actors for a role opposite a Superhero. Though only 5'2," I knew I could nail the part: She's tough, lean and statuesque.  So I put on my 4" heels and strutted to the audition.

The director liked my audition. I would love to be cast as the Superhero. Who said crimefighters have to be tall? Tobey Maguire is only 5'8" and that didn't stop him from becoming Spiderman.

I was one of those kids who honestly believed that I was born with superhuman powers. Accompanied by my Superdoll, Dusty, I would climb the highest trees, whip bullies on the playground, race cars on my bike - all in training to save mankind.

I would tie a makeshift parachute to Dusty and throw her off a cliff into a pile of leaves (some stunts I knew better than to risk myself) to make her fly. 

One awful day, Dusty missed the landing pad. She crashed with a horrific snap on the concrete. Her head snapped off with a "pop" like the sound of someone prying off a bottle cap.

"Your dad came home to find you prostrated with grief," my mother recalls. "He got a shoebox and shovel and out to the backyard went gravedigger and chief mourner. The beheaded dolly was buried amid tears and deep sorrow."

She bought me a new doll but it was never the same as Dusty. 

That day I learned even Superheroes are mortal.

These days my definition of a Superhero is different. They're the ones whose faith births miracles.  Who love the unlovable. Who remain hidden so others can shine. 

Their courage produces a divine exchange: beauty for ashes; joy for sorrow; strength for weakness. Their names are Melissa, Steve, Phil, Esther, Jackie...friends who's hearts are set ablaze with a vision to rock the world with their gifts.

Oh, in my heart I still dream of whipping bad guys and ridding the world of evil. And if the call comes to play a Superhero, a less-than-statuesque physique won't stop me any more than it did Tobey.  Besides, like the world's top webslinger, I'm a journalist - already have the perfect cover.

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Mercy

I wanted to be honest in my blog so some posts like this one deal with violence, sex, drugs.

Second Chances
I'm trying to remember the name of that TV show about a girl who encounters God in the people she meets. Something like that happened to me recently.

I was at a Hollywood lounge to meet a friend and ran into a guy who'd tried to pick me up the first time we'd met - clumsily fueled by too much booze.

He was apologetic this time so we started talking. He thought that given my background as a crime reporter, I might be interested in helping him write new parole legislation.

"You honestly believe most criminals can be rehabilitated?" I challenged. 

"You don't?" he countered.

Jaded as it may seem, there's only one story I covered where I felt the criminal deserved another chance...

why did you kill that kid?
It was my first time inside a prison. I felt vulnerable stripping off my coat, purse and jewelry in front of security guards. Sounds of clanging metal bars.  Inmates cat-calling as guards led us to a cell for supervised visits.

My photographer and I were shooting a sweeps series about juvenile crime.  Prison officials had agreed to let us interview one of the state's youngest inmates ever to be sentenced as an adult.

Guards brought him to the room in leg and arm shackles. I was shocked. He couldn't have weighed more than 120 pounds.  He looked about 14.

We didn't have much time so I got straight to the point, talking the street language we both understood. 

"What gang?" I asked. 

"Crips," he said.

"Why'd you kill that kid?" I asked. 

"'Cuz he shot my dog," he answered.

I didn't have any more questions.  We both got it. His unspoken words had told the whole story:  That kid killed the only thing that was mine. 

Street justice.

I stayed in touch with Anthony the next few years on the pretense he was a valuable source into the gangs I covered. Really, we were becoming friends.

One of Anthony's drawings about his life in prison

Anthony would draw to pass the time in prison. Sketches of cops handcuffing a boy. A pregnant girlfriend. Christ on a cross. A tearful boy becoming a man behind barbed wire fences.  

Images of his life. 

My stories with Anthony caught the attention of a college that thought he could qualify for a long-distance program for artists. Anthony gave me some drawings to say thank you.

making peace
Years later I wonder if I failed Anthony. I'd been one of his only advocates. When I quit the crime beat, I quit on him in a way. Sure, he owed something for the life he took but..."he shot my dog..."

"You have to make peace with your past," the man's voice broke into my thoughts. "Most of us who deal with criminals have to accept the fact that justice isn't always clear."

I think that man was Mercy. He was telling me it's ok not to know if Anthony deserved to live or die for his crime. Mercy doesn't even the score. Mercy clears the scorecard and forgives the past.

Anthony, I hope you made it.

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