For years, I have had the privilege of patrolling the Del Mar racetrack on opening day in pursuit of off-the-beaten-track stories as I capture the atmosphere of this annual San Diego ritual.
Not today. Instead, I am saying farewell to the many local readers who have become my friends, my confidants and my sounding board over the years.
It is with a leaden heart that I write my last official column 28 years after my debut on May 2, 1995, as The San Diego Union-Tribune city columnist.
With new MediaNews Group owners taking control and my twins embarking on an odyssey of college tours and career decisions, the timing seems right to retire. Nevertheless, it has been difficult to make the decision and to leave the newsroom that I have called home for more than 40 years.
I cut my journalistic teeth on the San Diego news scene, having started at the Copley-owned paper as a wide-eyed trainee fresh out of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
Initially I rotated from one beat to another as an intern answering to a string of beat reporters — covering news at the County Administration Center, San Diego City Hall, police station, city and county school districts, business community, regional bureaus, and more.
Early on, after graduating to full-fledged reporter, I masqueraded as a high school student to produce an exposé on weapons and drugs in our public schools (a role I certainly couldn’t play today). I joined elementary school students on a trip to Tuba City, Ariz., where we spent a few days living with Navajo and Hopi families.
In 1995, I joined in a harrowing America’s Cup race as the silent “seventeenth man” with the all-female crew aboard the racing yacht of former America’s Cup winner Bill Koch. On another occasion, I floated above San Diego in the Goodyear blimp. I even piloted a Navy nuclear submarine — only briefly, thank you — under the ever-vigilant eye of the captain.
One of my first interviews was with jazz great Count Basie, who was more than generous to this cub reporter facing a big learning curve. Not long after, I was assigned to interview Cheech & Chong, where one could get high taking a single breath in their smoke-filled backstage quarters at the San Diego Sports Arena.
A highlight of my early reporting days was my heart-to-heart talk with Theodor Geisel at his La Jolla home with its landmark tower.
As a child growing up in northern New York, I had lugged armloads of Dr. Seuss books from the library to devour at home. Who would have dreamed that one day I would be sitting with him in his study asking about his inspiration for those off-the-wall stories.
Columnist Diane Bell in 2010 keeping her eye on the city.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda/SDUT)
There were chats with many more celebrities and VIPs, usually buttonholed during San Diego visits over the years.
A potpourri of celebrity names float by: Annette Bening, Art Linkletter, Betty White, Bob Hope, Bo Derek, Carol Burnett, David Hasselhoff, Geena Davis, Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, Marilu Henner, Mario Lopez, Mark Harmon, Richard Dreyfuss, Tom Selleck and Will Farrell.
Also, Adam Lambert, Brooks & Dunn, Chris Isaac, Jason Mraz, Jewell, Kenny Loggins, Melissa McBride, Tanya Tucker, Henry Winkler, Jay Leno, Jerry Lewis, Joan Rivers, Roseanne Barr and William Shatner.
VIPs, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dick Cheney, Don Coryell, Elizabeth Dole, Françoise Gilot, Hillary Clinton, Joan Lunden, Maria Shriver, Margaret Thatcher, Martha Stewart, Nancy Reagan, Ralph Nader, Richard Branson, Sarah Ferguson and Zandra Rhodes … to mention a few of the more memorable.
But the people who left the most indelible mark were ordinary folks turned local heroes.
I’ll never forget the amazing courage of Johan Otter, of Escondido, horribly mauled by a grizzly bear while hiking with his daughter in Glacier National Park. Like the bear, who was protecting her two cubs, he diverted the raging animal’s attention to distract it from attacking his daughter, Jenna.
I also was inspired by San Diego’s “Highwayman,” good Samaritan Thomas Weller, whose only payment request for his recurring aid to broken-down freeway motorists was handing them a calling card that urged them to pass on the favor to someone else in need.
Chula Vista TikTok influencer Jesús Morales (@juixxe), who randomly gives $1,000 cash — and often much more — to hard-working taco vendors, is another curbside hero.
I’ve been blessed to meet living organ donors — Diane Brockington, Mark Neville, Jim Davies, Graham Bullock, and many more, who selflessly sacrificed their own kidneys or lungs to save others — sometimes strangers. Diane and her husband, John, went on to spend years supporting measures to raise organ donor awareness.
There have been many highlights, including a trip to Uganda to track endangered mountain gorillas, and a few lowlights, throughout my decades as a journalist.
Fate placed me in a front-row seat to the tragic crash of PSA Flight 182 over North Park in 1978. The fiery explosion played out before my eyes as I was driving to work. As the burning plane plummeted like a wounded eagle, my own life flashed before me.
That disaster took the life of the mother of our newsroom receptionist, the cousin of my hairstylist and the brother of a family friend. It was personal.
When 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult perished in a ritual suicide in a Rancho Sante Fe estate in 1997, I realized, in shock, I had attended a wedding in that same home on a much happier occasion. I followed the story through the eyes and words of Chuck Humphrey, one of the surviving cult members who opted, not long afterward, to join his departed colleagues.
After being one of the first San Diegans to publicize the devastating outbreak of COVID-19, vividly relayed to me by former San Diego journalist James Healy living in Beijing, I found myself relating my own COVID story of being placed on a ventilator. Then triumphantly leaving the hospital with the theme from “Rocky” echoing through the corridors of Scripps Memorial Hospital.
As a journalist, I’ve been an editorial writer, opinion page editor, president of the national Association of Opinion Page Editors, features section editor, consumer columnist, and more. I’ve occupied a catbird seat watching San Diego grow from a lazy beach-side oasis with a reputation as a Navy town to a thriving center of high tech, biotech and innovation.
I’ve observed politics shift from right to left and witnessed a parade of improprieties that dominated the headlines: the collapse of C. Arnholt Smith’s U.S. National Bank, city pension crisis, Strippergate lobbying scandal, Mayor Bob Filner’s sexual harassment, and criminal conduct of Congressmen Randy Cunningham and Duncan Hunter, to menton a few.
The unforgettable gift San Diego has given me over the years is my interaction with famous, infamous and everyday folks who make up the fiber of the region.
I publicized many deeds of kindness and spur-of-the-moment acts of heroism as I chronicled the daily scene, always trying to define what makes San Diego tick.
The San Diego Union-Tribune had six owners in 14 years. Tribune Publishing owned it when this 2016 Diane Bell photo was taken.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda/SDUT)
Hailing from the East Coast and having worked for U.S. News & World Report in Washington, D.C., I found it refreshing that San Diego had open spaces, room to grow and time for its residents to weigh in on the shape of the city’s future.
Those decisions lay in the hands of city leaders rather than having been handed down from land use planners, developers, architects and bureaucrats of generations past as in many cities in the South and East.
This was still a new frontier and those who craved a seat at the development table and a voice in our future, could have their say.
Decisions still are being made today that will affect the skyline, neighborhoods, density and appearance of San Diego tomorrow.
I pray that regional leaders have the wisdom and courage to do what is best rather than what is expedient or popular.
I want to thank every San Diegan who has read my column over the past 28 years for their attention, their loyalty and their many suggestions for coverage. It has been a privilege to be the messenger of those stories, big and little, that have woven the San Diego tapestry.
News is not just crime blotters, traffic accidents, government decrees, natural disasters and sunshine — or not.
From the beginning, I’ve referred to my beat as the “upbeat” as I strove to be the bearer of “good news” along with informative news.
People are the heart and soul of the community. Getting to know them has been my mission and my joy. Catching ordinary people doing extraordinary things has been my passion.
Individuals such as Sid Baxter, of Encanto, an American airline passenger who stayed behind in a burning jetliner that had crashed in an Arkansas storm in 1999 to rescue a fellow traveler trapped under a collapsed luggage rack. He crawled out through the black smoke and jagged debris with the woman, who had a broken neck, on his back.
As some may recall from my earlier columns, I am blessed to be an older mom with three teens, twins, Cassie and Chase, 15, and Brad, 19. This change of S.D. Union-Tribune ownership is a perfect time to shift my priorities to fully focus on their transition to adulthood and to join my husband, Roy, in retirement.
As I step aside, I urge you all to continue subscribing, reading the news and supporting my diligent SDUT colleagues who are dedicated to investigating, interviewing, gathering data and delivering the news to you each day.
In these trying economic times, as we struggle to adapt to changing formats and an unfriendly marketplace, we are dependent on your ongoing loyalty and support.
Continuing access to your local and regional news depends on it. Holding our leaders accountable is contingent upon it, and freedom of the press and speech will be diminished without it.
Thank you for inviting me into your lives.