Citizen Staff Writer
THE FINAL EDITION
In 1996 our current interim publisher, then business editor, Jennifer Boice, hired me right out of journalism school.
I said, “Are you sure you want to hire a single mom with three kids?” I’m glad she did.
Over the past dozen years not only have my children grown up – but I have as well.
I’ve had the opportunity to reach out and talk to people I normally would not have had access to including several political figures and entertainment icons such as Jay Leno, Roseanne Barr, Phyllis Diller and Don Rickles.
The interview that sticks in my mind is when Sen. John McCain made me sick. This is not a political comment.
About four years ago he came to the Citizen and I interviewed him. He had a horrible head cold. He sneezed into his hand and then shook mine. It was a bit sticky. A few days later I was sick. Thanks, senator!
LORRIE BROWNSTONE
Assistant city editor
I was a huge baseball fan as a kid. I’d watch any game I could on TV, hardly missed a Baseball Tonight on ESPN, and read every copy of the Star’s or Citizen’s sports section that I got my hands on.
So imagine my excitement, when as a young adult and covering sports for the Tucson Citizen, I had the opportunity to interview one of my childhood heroes in the clubhouse after a Diamondbacks spring training game. We’re talking someone whose poster used to hang on my wall as kid – how exciting, right?
The entire time I talked with him he had one foot propped up on a bench, a cigarette in one hand, a beer in the other, and his eyes glued to a golf tournament on the clubhouse TV. He never once looked over at me during the interview. Talk about having your bubble popped.
In 2005, I was sent to Desert Diamond to cover the weigh-in for the next night’s fight between Demetrius Hopkins and Tucson’s Nito Bravo.
Hopkins was the nephew of Bernard Hopkins, who at 40 was the oldest man to ever hold the middleweight championship in boxing and who had defended his title a world-record 20 times.
The publicist asked me if I wanted to talk to Bernard Hopkins and I said yes, obviously.
So the publicist walked me to the bar where Bernard was sitting and told him who I was. As he was talking to Bernard, I turned around and saw was a long line of boxing fans going back out the door – all waiting to talk to and get an autograph from Hopkins.
Hopkins told me to sit down with him at the bar so I could interview him. He talked to me for over half an hour – about everything from his nephew to his own career to the weather and even the big pancakes the casino served him for breakfast.
Meanwhile, I was holding up a large and growing line of impatient boxing fans – most of whom were drinking. If there hadn’t been a famous boxer sitting next to me, I think I might have needed a bodyguard. (On a side note, the next night, at the fight, I got to interview Oscar de la Hoya, too.)
MICHAEL CACCAMISE
Copy editor