I bristled. I was still smarting from the other day when he’d chastised me for giving off bad energy. “I beg you to get me a toothbrush,” Harry said. “Can you? I have to go to sleep and I don’t know where to look for one, and I don’t have anyone else to ask. I will be forever indebted.”
A toothbrush? I drove around like a maniac—cursing at the top of my lungs—looking for an open gas station. I finally found one and drove back to where The Anchor was waiting, and I bit my tongue as I handed off his toiletries.
The next day was Friday. Everyone was in a great mood. Harry was going home to New York for the weekend and he and I drove to St. Louis together. High from a week of grueling work and a light at the end of the tunnel, I forgot my anger as he told me stories of his early days.
We pulled up at the airport. Harry gathered his things, then shocked me by turning to me and acknowledging the elephant in the car. “I’m sorry I yelled at you at the fire station in Rocheport,” he said. “I was a putz.”
Harry was, and is, a truly good guy, and working with him reminded me of why I loved this business. In a galaxy of journalists who pretend to be “folksy” and of the people, he is the real deal.
It was also while covering breaking news that I got my first taste of Orange County. Prior to my visit as a news producer, the only thing I knew about the OC was that it was home to Disneyland and rich right-wingers. One day in New York, I was sitting at my desk, whining to a coworker that I had nothing to do that week. As if summoned by the very words, my senior producer appeared to tell me that wildfires were raging in Laguna Beach and I had to go. I went from thinking of leaving work early to hustling home to pack and catch a 6 p.m. flight to Los Angeles for who knew how long.
Any kind of location shoot is dependent on luck. A location shoot for a disaster? Luck sends her ugly stepsister, Pandemonium. On the way to Laguna Beach to get this live shot of the wildfires, it was unclear whether there’d even be a satellite truck to do the live shot. After hours of phone calls and confusion and maybe a few threats on people’s lives, I was ultimately told there would be a KCBS truck waiting for us. When I arrived, there was a truck, and suddenly it was 2:45 a.m.—fifteen minutes before our first hit, when the CBS This Morning was to go live on the East Coast. At this point I was driving up a mountain looking for a site where we could both get a transmission signal and see a fire in the background. (Tip from a Pro: You cannot do a live shot from a fire without a fire or smoke in the background.) It was getting so late and we were cutting it so close that I ultimately made the call to just stop in the middle of Newport Coast Road and crank up the satellite right where we were.
A crusty CBS News veteran, who I’d been instructed would be meeting me at the location to do the live report, arrived in a cab. When he got out, he took one look at our setup, charged over to me, and barked, “Have you ever done anything like this before?”
In truth, I hadn’t done much at this point—a plane crash, a hurricane, and the Great Flood—but I didn’t tell him that. As far as I was concerned, the fire wasn’t the only tragedy happening in Laguna, because we had been in full Keystone Kops mode all morning, losing trucks and changing locations over and over. We hadn’t had time to regroup before CBS This Morning started at 4 a.m. The bureau had sent some backup to help me book guests, but, unfortunately, that help came in the form of an entertainment producer who booked some old men who were on the scene to wash out the firemen’s sooty eyes. Is hearing from the eye-cleaners interesting to anyone, or is it a TLC show in the making? When the crusty newsman saw these guests, he flipped out—at me. “Go book some actual firemen, why don’t you?!” he screamed. While I didn’t disagree with him about the news value of the eye-washers, I already had an idea what the answer was going to be when I left the site to request an interview with some firemen. It turns out that no firemen were available to be on the show as they were otherwise engaged, PUTTING OUT FIRES!
I did, however, meet a home owner who had just lost his house. Bull’s-eye. I convinced him to come with me to the satellite truck, explaining that his story would help bring attention to what was going on in his area. Then, on my way back to the truck, devastated home owner in my possession, I got lost. When we finally arrived back at the spot where I was certain I had left the truck, a local crewmember came over to tell me that it had been moved because the smoke was inhibiting their ability to get a clean shot. The poor home owner lost his shit. He began screaming at me, saying I was leading him on a wild-goose chase. It was actually a wild truck chase, but for once I kept my mouth shut.
I did wind up getting the poor home owner to the new location, where he was interviewed, but he remained furious with me. Who could blame him? As if that man hadn’t been through enough.
After sucking up smoke all night, I was informed by the newsdesk that I’d be spending the day doing something far worse and possibly
