by Jeff Bell
“Please. Make yourself comfortable. My name is Dirk and I moderate this group. Right now, we’re just doing some sharing about our challenges this past week.”
Thirty pairs of eyes are locked on mine. I want—need—to make up an excuse, tell them I’m in the wrong place, and get the hell out of here. But I can’t. For whatever reason, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be, and whatever “knowing” tells me this also suggests I plant my butt in one of these seats. Now.
Over the course of the next forty-five minutes, I learn how off-base I’d been about who would attend this meeting. Not a single namby-pamby, touchy-feely type in the room. As it turns out, Dirk is a recovering alcoholic, clean and sober for nearly two decades now, and he and at least half of the other people in the room are here as part of their AA or other Twelve Step work. In no particular seating order around me are old men, kids barely out of their teens, a gray-haired woman with granny glasses, a hulking biker with mean tattoos, and a cast of some two dozen other miscellaneous characters, all joined by two common bonds: a heartfelt desire to rebuild their lives and a humble recognition that they can’t do it alone.
Something else strikes me early on, too: no one is pressuring anyone to say anything or volunteer any thoughts. Hands go up. Dirk calls on people. And they, in turn, offer real-life, school-of-hard-knocks comments on the various spiritual topics that pop up in discussion. The whole dynamic is far more comfortable than I could have imagined. If I weren’t so worked up over my driving episodes and my soggy umbrella’s current potential to cause all kinds of problems, I might even be able to relax.
After the meeting, Dirk catches me on my way out the door. I thank him for his hospitality and brace myself for the sales pitch I know is coming.
“I’m glad you showed up,” he says. “Please know you’re welcome any time.”
And that, along with a firm handshake, is all he’s interested in pitching me.
Week after week, I show up for Dirk’s Tuesday night group and quietly take in all the inspiring stories: a longtime drunk talking about the morning he woke up in a gutter and realized it was time to put his hands together in prayer; a recovering addict describing his life-changing revelation in prison; a former CEO explaining what it’s like to wind up with a cardboard box for your home.
I say very little, just soak it all in. But as the weeks march on, I come to realize that I’m the guy who keeps pulling pennies from the jar next to the deli cash register to round out his bill, but never sees a need to toss an occasional coin from his own change back in the bin. Here I am drawing inspiration from recovering drunks and addicts, all brave enough to talk about their lives in the gutter, but I’m too embarrassed to open my mouth about driving in circles?
So one night, forty minutes or so into our meeting, I just do it: stand up and tell the group I have something to share. I get about three quarters of the way through my little speech before I start to lose it and scurry out of the room. Standing on the front porch, I realize what an egregious mistake I’ve just made. I decide to forgo the rest of the meeting and head home, leaving this place behind me forever. But damn it, my jacket is still inside.
I peek my head in the door and see that the group is just breaking up. My jacket is waiting for me right where I’ve left it. So too, it seems, is all of the personal encouragement I’ve been craving.
One by one they come over to me, arms outstretched. Tattooed and needled-pocked forearms wrap around my shoulders. Eyes set in faces weathered and chiseled by years of rough living look right into mine. Voices strengthened by a power greater than their own whisper in my ears.
“We’re proud of you, Jeff.”
“You can get through this, big guy.”
“Your Higher Power is there for you. Always.”
These are the true believers comforting me. Ragged, battered, patched-up souls who have learned the hardest way possible how to tap into the power of their own belief. They are walking their talk one day at a time, carrying each other when the journey calls for it.
If I, too, am going to stumble my way along some kind of pseudo-spiritual path, I know these are the travel companions I want by my side.
fifteen
fast-forward 2 months
The first two familiar figures I spot are Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden. I think that’s Robert Shapiro just to my left. It’s hard to tell. They all look so different in person, so much smaller and more ordinary, unframed by a television screen.
We are standing elbow to elbow, the four of us and at least fifty others, in a narrow wood-paneled foyer. Attorneys, family members, selected representatives of the general public, and a handful of credentialed reporters like myself, all waiting to help make, record, or witness an afternoon’s worth of judicial history in the room just beyond us.
It’s June 13, 1995. The “trial of the century” is in recess, about to resume here on the ninth floor of the Criminal Courts Building at 210 West Temple Street in Los Angeles. At any minute now, a bailiff will arrive to swing open the doors marked “Department 103” and usher us into Judge Lance Ito’s courtroom, where I’ll take my designated seat. And there I’ll sit until the following recess, at which point another CBS-affiliated reporter will take over from me. After months of watching the O.J. Simpson trial on TV like millions of other Americans glued to their sets, I’m about to do what they can only dream of: take in America’s ultimate soap opera with my own two eyes.
No question about it. This is the most coveted trial assignment of an entire generation of reporters, and here I am with an afternoon pass. Just one more huge opportunity to come my way in recent months.
The courtroom doors spring open at 2:40 and we file in. The media coordinator has given me general directions where to sit, but the tiny room—which is about a quarter of the size it appears to be on TV—is devoid of any helpful signs such as “Reporters Sit Here” or “Keep Out of This Area.” I hope to God I’m plopping down in the right place. Is the media section really this close to the jury box?
By the time I settle in and confirm that the people to my immediate right and left are indeed reporters, all the key players have taken their places. Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden sit at the prosecution table, joined by their colleague from the district attorney’s office, Brian Kelberg. To their left and across the center aisle sit Dream Teamers Johnnie Cochran and Robert Shapiro, along with several other staffers I can’t seem to place. And there, stuffed into a chair right alongside them at the crowded defense table, wearing an expensive suit and an almost vacant expression, is the most infamous man in America: Orenthal James Simpson. O.J. The football legend. The Hertz guy. The murder defendant.
Within a few minutes, a bailiff announces the arrival of the honorable Judge Lance Ito. We all stand and the jurors enter their box. I watch with fascination as the men and women who will decide this case take their seats directly in front of me. Theirs are the faces the rest of the world can’t see, hidden from the courtroom cameras, off limits to the hovering photographers, sequestered from society by a team of court-appointed security guards. I can’t help feeling both privileged and uncomfortable now, having “special knowledge” of their true identities.
L.A. County’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, is testifying today, and Judge Ito instructs Brian Kelberg to continue his direct examination. Soon we are all listening to a grisly discussion about the fatal stab wounds to Ron Goldman’s chest and thigh.
Maybe it’s all the cameras. Perhaps it’s just seeing such a well-known cast of characters all in one place. But this whole scene feels like a movie set to me, with all the key players going through predetermined motions and reciting scripted lines. My own fear director, Doubt, is hungry for a piece of the action and wants so badly to cast me as a walk-on villain.
Conveniently, the opportunity presents itself within minutes when I look up at the bench and see Judge Ito staring at me. Well, maybe he’s just looking across the courtroom in general. But
how can I be sure? Have I done something wrong? I know Ito has a penchant for throwing people out of his courtroom, expelling spectators for everything from chewing gum to whispering. But with the exception of an occasional pen click, I can’t think of any noise infractions of which I might be guilty.
I look away from Ito and cast my glance straight ahead. But doing so leaves me staring right at the jury box not more than fifteen feet away. I know the alternate juror pool is nearly depleted these days in the wake of several recent dismissals. I also know that jurors can be booted for even the slightest communications with reporters. I put the two together and imagine what could happen if, inadvertently, I were to make eye contact with a juror or two, who, in turn, might be dismissed for trying to communicate with me. Doubt whispers that I could wield my enormous power and single-handedly derail the biggest trial of our time!
I can’t let this happen. Can’t even risk it by allowing my eyes to get anywhere near the men and women of the jury. But with the bench and the jury box now both off limits, I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be looking. OCD has found its trap.
Dr. Lakshmanan is testifying about blood pressure now, and I can feel mine rising. I am growing lightheaded, dizzy, buckling under the weight of this whole trial resting squarely on my shoulders. I need to get out of here, away from all this potential to make a mess of everything. Mercifully, Judge Ito calls a recess at around 3:30, and fifty minutes after entering the courtroom, my time is up.
The writing is on the wall. Given my struggles in the Simpson courtroom and my increasing difficulties just getting to the site of a story, my reporting days are clearly numbered—despite all my recent progress with Jackie.
The reality of this notion, though, is unacceptable.
I can try harder, and I do. I force myself to walk away from my car on the first attempt when parking for an assignment, or I get creative with taxis and BART trains to avoid the whole issue altogether. I make every effort to get myself to the very center of a breaking news scene, even if it means nudging past thick crowds and police tape. And I try to take the fire chief at his word when he tells me it’s okay to roll my tires over his hoses at the scene of a brush fire. But I am paying a huge personal price for my efforts. And I am fighting a losing battle.
There is a fine line, I am learning, between “believing in” and “fooling” oneself, and while I’m still not sure where I’m supposed to draw that line for myself, I know street reporting is on the far side of it. I can’t imagine that any of my new AA friends would pursue a career in bartending. But isn’t that, in essence, what I’m trying to do?
It’s all about limits, I am coming to understand. But the consequences of that conclusion are all too sobering. At KCBS, like at most all-news stations, there are only a handful of full-time anchors who spend their entire shifts in the control room. Those of us who rotate in on a part-time basis are expected to be available for street reporting, as necessary, to cover all bases. It’s a simple matter of scheduling, really. Short of explaining my story to my bosses, I can’t think of any way to excuse myself from the street, and it’s not as if any full-time anchoring slots are going to open up anytime soon. So my choices, when it comes right down to it, are but two: (1) find a way to handle my field reporting assignments at KCBS, or (2) look for a full-time anchoring position with some other station.
“Only an idiot would ever leave KCBS,” a friend in the business once said to me after learning I had landed a job there. An idiot or an obsessive-compulsive, I think to myself as I begin sending out airchecks and resumes to news directors everywhere.
Nobody’s hiring.
This is the mid-1990s. The entire radio business is shrinking as the effects of deregulation begin to kick in in earnest. Month after month, one giant corporation gobbles up another, only to be gobbled up itself by an even bigger player. “Do more with less” is the directive given to station managers everywhere from corporate bosses in out-of-state skyscrapers.
The growing uncertainty surrounding my future begins taking its toll. With each passing day, I spend that much more time checking my tapes and everything around me, even as I reread my Jampolsky books. And tug on my dog tag. And beg myself to believe. My Beck Inventory scores rise like mercury in a thermometer on a hot summer day.
And then, at long last, the phone rings in early July. It’s an old boss of mine who now heads up sales for KFBK Radio in Sacramento.
“Our afternoon drive cohost is leaving us for a gig in Seattle,” he starts off.
“Yeah?” I say, wondering if he’s taking this conversation where I hope that he is.
“Yeah. You interested in talking?”
If leaving KCBS is idiocy, than leaving the fourth largest radio market in the country for one ranked twenty-seventh is probably pure lunacy. But market ranking becomes almost irrelevant when you’re talking about a broadcasting powerhouse like KFBK. The station is legendary in the industry, with fifty thousand watts of power and market share ratings unmatched by all but a very few news-talks in America. Rush Limbaugh worked there just before going national. So, too, did Morton Downey, Jr. The station’s newsroom is one of the best around, holding its own against the bigger staffs in San Francisco and Los Angeles. An open drive-time host position is a plum opportunity, no matter how you look at it, and I know I’d be an idiot not to at least go talk to KFBK.
Ten weeks and three visits to Sacramento later, I sign a lucrative two-year contract to join KFBK as its afternoon anchor. For better or worse, I am about to put eighty-five miles between me and—in no particular order—KCBS, Channel 2, Jackie, The Boat, my new Twelve Step friends, my parents, my childhood stomping grounds, and nearly four years’ worth of OCD episodes.
James Marshall struck gold outside Sacramento back in 1848. On a Sunday in late September 147 years later, I pull into town to try my own luck.
From my first glimpse of the region, I realize it’s much more than I ever anticipated. More spacious. More developed. More inviting. More comfortable. Everything new and old all in one place. Trees. Rivers. Mountains. Riverboats. Gold Rush era forts. Shiny highrises. A basketball arena. The state capitol and the governor’s mansion. All right there, just a ninety-minute drive from San Francisco.
As for KFBK, it is everything the industry trades have made it out to be. From its plush modern studio to its well-seasoned staff, the operation is every bit as impressive as anything I’ve seen in L.A. or San Francisco. And with a seventy-three-year heritage of serving the community, KFBK truly owns this market. Locals don’t just listen to the station, they take a personal stake in it.
News anchors at KFBK are actually news personalities—a fact pointed out to me many times during my long interviewing process. Just what this distinction means becomes quite clear to me as I get to know my new colleagues in general, and my new on-air partner in particular.
Her name is Kitty O’Neal, and she is without a doubt the best known and most loved woman in Sacramento. Now in her fourteenth year with KFBK, Kitty has done a little bit of everything for the station, from serving as Rush’s high-profile producer back in the mid-1980s, to co-anchoring afternoons in more recent years.
A petite redhead with sparkling green eyes and a million-dollar smile, Kitty has also parlayed her radio success into an impressive television career, moonlighting for several years as an entertainment reporter for the local CBS affiliate and appearing in numerous commercials. Her face has graced the cover of Sacramento Magazine, and her emceeing talents have been employed by just about every service organization in town. Kitty is a huge star around here. She is also an exceptionally gracious woman. We hit it off from our very first conversation. Our bosses knew what they were doing, pairing us up as a team.
As fate would have it, O.J. and I meet up again on the afternoon of my KFBK debut, this time hundreds of miles apart. I am stepping up to this station’s microphone for the very first time just as he is getting word that his jury has reached its verdict. The news crosses the wires right
away, and my first three hours of airtime are rife with anticipation of the most awaited judgment since the Lindbergh trial. Superstitious broadcasters would say this is a good omen, a kiss from the mighty news gods who control such things.
Kitty and I quickly fill up a week’s worth of shows with O.J. verdict analysis and reaction, debriefing all the major pundits and working off one another as if we’ve been doing this for years. In the studio and at home, I slip into my new life with the ease of someone trying on a custom suit, hand-tailored for a perfect fit. Sam and the girls arrive in Sacramento, and professional movers take care of all the shipping, compliments of my new employer. A free move to go along with all the other extras coming my way: trade scrip for restaurants all over town, lucrative endorsement deals, courtside tickets to see a Kings game at Arco Arena. Considering all these perks, and the publicity photo shoots, and the Sacramento Bee’s flattering announcement of my arrival, I’m thinking a guy could get used to the VIP treatment that seems to come with this whole “news personality” thing.
Best of all though, I’m finished for good with my OCD.
This, at least, is what I tell myself over and over again in the weeks that follow. Big stars don’t fight daily battles with mental illness. I am a big star now. Therefore I am no longer mentally ill. Perfect logic, as far as I’m concerned, though not quite the argument I share with Jackie when I explain that I’m planning to go off my meds. She and I have arranged to talk on the phone every other week. Between her support and that which I’m finding at the nondenominational Unity church the girls and I have started attending, I’m certain I’ll be fine.
“Your call,” Jackie tells me. “Just be sure to talk with Dr. Smith about how to phase out the medication.”
“Right,” I say, just before taking my bottle of Zoloft pills and burying it deep in the medicine cabinet for all eternity. I don’t need these damn things anymore. Period. So after more than a year of doing like Alice and “feeding my head,” I simply stop cold turkey one day.
