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LEARNING | LIFE LESSONS
A Kidnapped Heiress and a Security Guard Changed My Life
Sometimes it’s not the big shots but the so-called ‘ordinary people’ who turn out to be unsung heroes in your life.
By the time newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was captured in 1975, I knew something was off.
In less than two years, my career had skyrocketed. The distance between my Atlanta birthplace and San Francisco was not just 3,000 miles. It was a leap from the 18th television market to the 5th. It was a 100 percent increase in base salary, not counting extra pay every time you appear on camera. And thanks to that abducted heiress, I was on camera a lot.
By this time, I knew how to write for TV news. I knew how to move, talk, and dress for it too. And how to keep eye-contact with the camera even when there was no teleprompter, a device I hated.
Although I am Black, the literary character that best describes the persona I’d created was Jay Gatsby. “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him.”
Don’t get me wrong
I did not think I was good looking. In fact, as the person in my family with the darkest complexion, I had grown up believing the color of my skin made me unattractive. But I…
