I LOVED trouble even at a young age.
One day as a child in Manila, I saw people scampering away from the site of a brawl. So I ran to the opposite direction — to where the bloodshed was.
I became a police reporter many years later. The kind who stayed up late every night waiting for something terrible to happen. The kind who felt bad when nothing bad happened. The gorier the crime, the more news worthy. I wanted to be the reporter who was there when it happened.
I was that kind of reporter in the first 12 years of my career. Then I came to Saipan. One of the first news stories I wrote was about a flame tree that fell because of fungi.
One day I saw three police cars racing to somewhere. They were followed by more police cars. Something tragic must have happened. Hostage-taking maybe, or a bank robbery — a terrorist attack! This is it, I told myself. This was the kind of incident I’d been waiting for.
I found the cops. They were surrounding a lady trying to explain how she hit another vehicle while backing up in a store’s parking lot. I stayed a little longer. I was hoping that something big and tragic might happen. Perhaps the lady would go nuts and attempt to grab a cop’s gun.
But nothing like that happened. I returned to Variety’s newsroom and wrote about another fungi-ridden flame tree. The next day, the parking lot incident was a big story in another newspaper. I got scooped.
A few years later, I was assigned to the political beat. That’s when I started getting into what I loved about this job. Trouble. Yes. I got myself into a lot of trouble with politicians and government officials because of my mistakes in reporting. I am still trying my best to make things right every step of the way.
<p class=”p1″><em>A few years later, I was assigned to the political beat. That’s when I started getting into what I loved about this job.<span class=”Apple-converted-space”> </span></em>
Politics is interesting. There’s no bloodshed but it’s a “bloodsport.” And everyone is related to someone.
Right now I’m still covering politics and I think I’ve finally learned how to be at the right place at the right time. My eternal love for trouble is probably why I love this job. It’s also my 15th year with Marianas Variety. Happy Anniversary!
