A variety of vegetables are available for planting at Walter Andersen Nurseries in San Diego.

By Pat Sherman

Health-minded and socially conscious San Diegans are following the lead of First Lady Michelle Obama, who in 2009 started an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden during World War II.

Kathleen Probus, who teaches vegetable and tomato gardening classes at Walter A ndersen Nursery, says there is substantial
interest in home gardening these days. The reasons she hears include concern about chemical pesticides, fertilizers and genetically-modified produce, food allergies and recent E. coli and salmonella scares.

“People want to know where their plants came from and make sure they’re not feeding their family something harmful,” she says.

Getting started: sun and soil
Longtime San Diego weatherman and environmentalist Loren Nancarrow (a Fox 5 San Diego news anchor) has authored several books on the subject of organic gardening, branding himself as a local expert on the subject.

Excited to start his onions this season, Nancarrow suggests first-time vegetable gardeners start small, choosing the sunniest spot on their property.

“How you start will determine whether you continue,” he says.

He suggests digging out existing soil and replacing it with nutrient-rich compost, which is available for about $12 a truckload at the Miramar Landfill.

“The added benefit is you really don’t need to add any fertilizer on top of that, because the compost itself will feed the plants,” he says. “With chemical fertilizers, those chemicals go straight to the plant and they grow beautifully, but the soil becomes completely worthless—and that’s what’s happening across America right now.”

Nancarrow suggests purchasing or constructing a raised bed, and adding drip irrigation or a recycled soaker hose, so that water permeates the soil and reaches the root system.

Probus advises first-time gardeners to plant vegetables appropriate to the season.

“March is right on the cusp between the cool season and the hot season,” she says. “Start with more of the beans and bell peppers. You can grow some of the earlyseason tomatoes like Early Girl, San Diego, Celebrity and Champion, though it’s still a little early for the larger varieties.”

Condo owners and renters might consider windowsill gardening.

“If you don’t want to have to bend over to pick your vegetables, you can just pick them out of a small box that sits on top of a sill or
hangs off a wall,” Probus says. “It’s just easier.”

Joie tee, $168, bracelets, $58, Aqua necklace, $48, Bloomingdale’s, bloomingdales.com. (Photo by Brevin Blach)

Though windowsill gardens are good for smaller vegetation, Probus says people should realize their tomatoes and peppers may not reach the same size as they might outdoors.
walterandersen.com, victorygardenssandiego.com

Tips for starting a vegetable garden
• Plant in the sunniest portion of the yard
• Replace or enrich existing soil with compost
• Choose plants appropriate for the season
• Purchase or construct a raised vegetable container garden
• Add a drip irrigation system

Vegetables to plant in March: cabbage, carrots, beans, zucc hini, pumpkins, melons, some tomatoes
Summer vegetables: Tomatoes, chilies, corn, cucumbers and peppers
Winter vegetables: Broccoli, cauliflower, spinach and kale

By Dave Good
Photo by Brevin Blach

At first glance, Jane Mitchell doesn’t seem like someone who would care to unlock the inner mysteries of the lives of pro ballplayers. But with 26 Emmy Awards and close to 100 episodes under her belt, the host of 4SD Channel 4 San Diego’s One on One with Jane Mitchell has emerged as one of this city’s best producers of sports biographies. As such, over the past dozen years, Mitchell has interviewed a roster of home-town sports talent including Ted Williams (“Nobody expected he would sit with me for an hour; it went longer”) Ken Caminiti (“He was an old soul”) and Trevor Hoffman (“In a word? ‘Intense’”).

Quick to smile and lacking pretense, Mitchell says she did not grow up as a sports fan. But when the opportunity was presented to develop sports programming for Channel 4, she didn’t waver. She may not have known a thing about professional athletes, but she did know how to tell a story on camera.

“I was a hard-news reporter for nine years,” she says, having worked in Texas and Oklahoma before returning to her hometown of San Diego in the early 1990s. “I covered it all—tornados, weather, drug busts, city politics and plane crashes.”

It was after producing special coverage for the Republican National Convention here that Mitchell joined forces with Cox Communications. In 1997, she went to her first Spring Training, and the crack of a baseball bat sending one deep into the stratosphere changed her life.

“I fell in love with baseball that day,” Mitchell says. Her mission thereafter became a combination of passions: “What I loved, which is storytelling, and what I grew to love, which is baseball.” Ken Caminiti was one of Mitchell’s first interviews. He was known for being guarded on camera, but after an hour and a half, Mitchell had nailed one of the more self-revealing interviews ever given by the late Padres star. “He said that, in the beginning, he didn’t like baseball as a kid, that he was afraid of getting hit by the ball and that, when it finally happened, it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would.”

If One on One has a goal, Mitchell says, it is to go beyond the box score. “These guys are real people,” she says. (Indeed, Geoff Blum of the Houston Astros breaks down twice during his on-screen chat with Mitchell.) “Our mission is to connect the fans with the players. We feel that the way to do that is to get to know them as people.”

“At the time, getting to know the players on a personal level was not the norm, certainly not through interviews in their homes. This was fairly new territory and I was charting the course of the content and my style, not even knowing yet where this would end up.”

Excerpt from One on One: My Journey with Hall of Famers, Fan favorites, and Rising Stars, a brand new book by Jane Mitchell.

Jane Mitchell says everybody wanted to know what it was like to hang with the legends of baseball. A book, she thought, could be a means to tell all of her behind-the-story stories. She began writing in 2007, on New years Eve.

“My father thought that baseball was the most boring game ever.” The irony is not lost on her—he died from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or ALS. His illness is what brought Mitchell back to San Diego, in 1992, in a random turn of events that led her to redirect her career from hard news reporter to television sports biographer and, now, author.

Story and Photo By Dave Good
(Published in the May 2010 issue)

It’s a safe bet that when NBC 7/39 evening news anchor Marty Levin retires at the end of May, he’ll be breaking out the tackle box.

“I love to fish,” he says. “One thing I’ve done consistently my whole life is fishing, ever since I was five or six years old.”

Levin still has the same fly rod he received as a gift when he graduated from high school in his hometown of Bar Harbor, Maine. And he still uses it when fishing in the San Diego surf, but his favorite spot is on the Green River.

“It flows down into Utah where we fish it,” he says. “There are more fish per mile there than anywhere. It’s all catch-and-release, which is fine by me because I don’t keep them anyway. I’m always good to the fish.”

Back on dry land, Levin has been with KNSD for just over 22 years and has won more than a dozen Emmy Awards and three Golden Mikes. He and his wife, Gail, live in University City. Their son, J.T., is a University of Missouri journalism school grad.

“It’s worked out better in San Diego than I ever would have imagined.”

Levin’s distinguished career began with a journalism class at the University of Oregon. He says he read news on the campus radio station for a few months, and then landed a gig at a commercial radio station. In the years leading up to his anchoring TV news, he was a Top 40 disc jockey.

In 1977, Levin anchored at KGTV Channel 10 for three years before leaving town for a big-league anchor post in the nation’s capitol. He then returned to San Diego, landing at KFMB Channel 8 news before taking the job at NBC’s KNSD Channel 39.

“I’m one of three people,” he says, “that has worked at all three of the major San Diego stations.”

Phyllis Schwartz, former president and general manager of NBC 7/39, remembers

Levin as having the most insightful opinion in the newsroom.

“He was the guy that everybody looked to if there was a problem,” Schwartz says, “whether about the news or something the station was involved in. Even if he wasn’t involved in the decision, the first thing I’d say to the news director was, ‘How do you think this will play with Marty?’ People respected his opinion. He was a good barometer.”

Jim Sanders, now retired, was news director at KNSD in the late 1990s. “I think Marty’s the smartest guy I’ve ever worked with,” he says, “and I’ve worked with a lot of people in 30 years.” Sanders describes Levin as being both complicated and simple, but definitely not the celebrity type.

“I’ve always been kind of private,” Levin says. “I don’t think I’ve ever taken the public role seriously. I’ve never been big on celebrating me.”

Will he miss broadcasting?

“The public part of that? No, I don’t think I’m going to miss it. Maybe I’m fooling myself. I’ll have to wait and see. I’m trying not to be too apprehensive or too over-confident. I’ve never retired before. What do I know?”

Marty Levin’s final day on the air will be May 26. After that, he’ll be reeling in the years in more ways than one.

Photo and Story by Dave Good
(Published in the April 2010 issue)

Susana Rivera Torres has a secret fan. He is unknown to anyone in her vast Univision (KBNT San Diego, Channel 17) television audience, but his dedication runs above and beyond the call of duty.

At three in the morning, he is awake first. He goes to her room, wakes her, turns on the house lights, fixes her breakfast and starts her car, allowing it to warm up while she finishes eating.

“Every day,” she says. “He hasn’t missed one day in nine months. He is an angel.”

The angel’s name is Agustin Rivera Torres. “My dad,” she says, “is my biggest fan.”

Torres moved with her family to San Diego more than a decade ago. She graduated from San Diego State University and has been with the staff at Univision for five years. Today, she is host of the morning news show, Despierta San Diego, a position she has held for the past 10 months.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” she says. “I had no experience anchoring.”

And if his daughter’s sudden stardom is causing Agustin, the hardest working dad in show business, to lose any sleep, he’s not complaining.

By Julia Clarke
Photo by Janelle Maas
(Published in the February 2010 issue)

Ruben Galvan is sitting in the kitchen/lounge at the San Diego 6 television studios when he’s asked to describe the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to him while cameras were rolling.

Just then, anchor Marc Bailey walks into the room and interjects, “What about that time you got attacked by a military training dog and broke your wrist? Or when you accidentally said ‘shit’ while you were riding a bull at the Lakeside rodeo? Or…” Bailey’s voice trails off as Galvan’s boisterous laugh fills the space. Unfazed, Galvan offers up another of his sitcom-worthy moments:

“Once I was dancing, on-air, and dropped down and ripped my pants open. The most embarrassing thing was that I wasn’t wearing any underwear that day!”

As San Diego 6 News in the Morning’s feature entertainment reporter, Galvan has found himself in every situation imaginable, from interviewing celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Eva Longoria on the red carpet to riding a wild bull at the Lakeside rodeo.

The work, he says, is the realization of a long-held dream.

“In college, I knew right away I wanted to be a news reporter,” says Galvan, whose role model as a kid was Peter Jennings. After graduating from college, Galvan learned the ropes during an internship with the FOX affiliate in his hometown of Houston. His first paid gig was as a hard news reporter at a station in Boise, Idaho, where he covered murder trials, education and other civic news.

He lasted eight months before deciding the job wasn’t a perfect fit. “I was beginning to think this work wasn’t for me, but I thought I’d give it another chance back in Texas,” he recalls. After two more stints, he began to doubt if the TV news business was his true calling. That’s when he decided to make a break for it. “I always wanted to live in California, so I packed up my little Jetta and drove to San Diego.”

When he arrived, the first thing he did was drop off a job application at Banana Republic in Fashion Valley (“I knew I needed a job right away”) and a demo tape at the (then) XETV studio.

Five days later, Banana Republic called to offer him a job. An hour after that, the XETV station manager called to invite Galvan to be a freelance reporter. The decision was easy. When a veteran entertainment reporter became ill, Galvan was asked to fill in—and he knew right away that he had found his niche. “It came so natural to me,” he says.

Despite his on-air gabbiness and outgoing personality, Galvan says he’s different off-camera. “People see that one side of Ruben—high energy—but in real life I’m a really private person and kind of a shy guy.” He spends his downtime catching up with friends, dining out around town (especially in his Little Italy neighborhood) and going to the movies. Or you might catch him running along the beach in Coronado or La Jolla. But his alltime favorite activity? Dancing.

“I’m always dancing in the car before I go to work. I can dance anywhere…sometimes it can get a little out of hand,” he says.

If you want to catch Galvan in action, swing by The Waterfront, Stingaree or Vin de Syrah one of these nights. Underwear optional.

By Logan Broyles
Main Photo by Brevin Blach

There’s an old joke that there’s no easier job than being a weather reporter in San Diego. But it wasn’t always smooth sailing for Jodi Kodesh, NBC 7/39 News in the Morning traffic and weather anchor.

It took years of hard work got her to where she is today. Kodesh has had her head in the clouds for years, being a meteorologist was something of a childhood dream.

“I’ve been obsessed with the weather since I was really little. I always wanted to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz,” says Kodesh. “My mom was really good at sewing, so she made me this legit costume with real ruby-red high-heels that I would always wear for Halloween.”

After graduating from Mississippi State University with a bachelor’s degree in geosciences, Kodesh got a job as a newspaper reporter. By age 28, she had been a reporter for six years and had been married to her husband, Mark, for five. But before she would have kids, there was something she still had to do.

“I didn’t want to be that mother telling her children to pursue their dreams if she, in fact, had failed to try,” she says.

So, she clicked her heels together three times, and—POOF! —she was a meteorologist. Actually, it wasn’t that easy. Kodesh paid her dues as an intern at CBS 2 in Palm Springs, then got her break when the station’s weather girl suddenly quit. Four years later, NBC’s San Diego affiliate called to offer her a position as traffic anchor and member of the weather team.

“I grew up coming with my family to Seaport Village and the campground by the bay, so it was my dream to end up in San Diego,” Kodesh says. “My goal in 10 years is to still be living here, but with a bigger family—and to be the exclusive weather woman at NBC.”

It seems Kodesh’s passion for weather can be matched only by her love for footwear, which is why she’s pictured here in her shoe closet. Her most beloved pair?

“To this day, my favorite high-heels are ruby red,” she says.

By Julia Clarke
Photo by Janelle Maas

If you want to find out where all the Canadians are in San Diego, go to an ice rink,” chuckles Barbara-Lee Edwards. That’s where you’re likely to find the Vancouver native when she’s not co-anchoring Channel 8’s evening newscasts. (Move over Sarah Palin, we’ve got our own self-described “hockey mom” with beauty-queen good looks.)

Between shuttling her six year-old son to hockey practice and her 13 year-old daughter to softball games, Edwards keeps a fairly low profile during her downtime.

“My favorite days are those when I wake up in the morning with absolutely nothing planned,” she says. The Encinitas resident says an ideal day might start with breakfast on the deck at Ki’s restaurant overlooking Cardiff reef, followed by a game of tennis at The Bridges (where she plays on a competitive women’s doubles team) or a hike at Torrey Pines State Park. “It’s just breathtaking there,” she says.

And a far cry from the icy clime of Winnipeg, Manitoba, where Edwards and her family lived for six years before KFMB-TV came calling. “They say it’s the coldest city on earth with a population over 500,000,” she says, a shiver creeping into her voice.

Edwards studied broadcast journalism at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and got her first TV gig with a Vancouver station, where she reported on sports and weather. It was at her next job as anchor and producer for an affiliate station in Saskatchewan where she met her future husband, Curtis, a news and sports photographer.

Some evenings, Curtis and the kids swing by the Channel 8 studios to grab a bite with Mom between newscasts. And they were there to welcome her across the finish line of November’s Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk. It was her sixth time participating in the 60-mile Walk, which raises funds and awareness for breast cancer.

“Women’s health issues are really important to me,” says Edwards, who reports on the latest medical headlines in her “Health Alert” segments. “In my early twenties, I had a scare with a lump, and it got me interested in learning more about breast cancer. I felt so in the dark because there was little information out there. The key is early detection and to get the issue out there,” she says.

Edwards is also a big supporter of the American Heart Association (each year she emcees its Red Dress Luncheon) and Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego County. It’s her way of giving back to the community that’s embraced her as one of their own.

“I really feel like this is home now,” says Edwards. “And here you can play hockey year-round!”

By Rob Donoho

Having your mother anchor the news on TV is something to brag about, right?

Not necessarily.

“My son is 10 years old and he couldn’t care less about the fact that I’m on television,” says Susan Taylor, whose face has been a mainstay on NBC San Diego’s afternoon and evening newscasts for more than 14 years.

Taylor prefers not to use her son’s name in public forums, but she’s a proud mom who likes to tell stories about her boy, who was conceived not long after a doctor told her she couldn’t have children.

“When he was about two years old, he would hear the music on the TV that played before the show came on,” says Taylor. “And according to my husband, he’d go up to the television and hit it with his hands, because he knew Mommy was coming on.”

Maybe a 10-year-old cares that his mother is a TV newsie, and maybe he doesn’t. But Taylor definitely scored Cool Mom points with her job this past summer. For a couple live newscasts, she let her son hang out on the set.

“He knew if he said one word, it was over,” remembers Taylor. “He was great.”

Taylor is constantly juggling motherhood and career. Her husband Ed is a stay-at-home dad. When the guys are leaving for school in the morning, Taylor is usually still in bed. She gets to NBC’s downtown studio in the afternoon, stays in work mode until the 6 p.m. newscast is done, drives home to North County for dinner with the family, and then heads back downtown for the 11 p.m. show.

“It’s a complicated and challenging dance,” she says.

Weekends are spent taking the family dog, Chewbacca, to the beach, or just hanging around the house. “My son’s friends tend to spend a lot of their time at our house. They have Nerf gun battles and they went through a Star Wars phase. They’ve also been making movies, of late.”

What about newscasts?

“Nope,” says Taylor. Her son isn’t even allowed to watch the news.

Speaking of the industry, Taylor says the news business is finally seeing an uptick from the depths of budgets being cut due to lack of advertising revenue.

“Right now we have fewer people and smaller budgets, and it’s harder to do your job up to the standards you’re used to.”

Taylor enjoys working with her longtime KNSD (NBC 7/39) co-anchor Marty Levin. She, Levin and sports anchor Jim Laslavic have all worked together over a span of two decades, beginning when all three were at KFMB (Channel 8).

“Over the years, and even as technology and the Web have come into our lives, my job hasn’t changed,” says Taylor. “I’m still paid to know what’s going on, and to tell stories. The delivery system is changing, sure, but the art of telling stories isn’t.”

And that, presumably, includes the art of telling stories about your kids.

By Ron Donoho
Photos by Dave Good
(Published in the October 2009 issue)

It’s October 2003. Lena’ Lewis is standing atop a San Diego hill doing a live shot for the KUSI Morning News. As the camera rolls, television viewers see a police officer interrupt Lewis mid-sentence.

“He said, ‘Stop talking right now,” says Lewis, her eyes wide as she recalls the moment. “He said, ‘Fire is coming up the hill and you have to leave right now.’ That was enough for me. We packed up and left.”

Lewis has been a reporter and fill-in anchor at independent network KUSI-TV since 2001. She covered the 2003 and 2007 wildfires and, as Cal Fire warns this could be another bad season for blazes, is poised to hit the fire lines again this year.

“Sure, it’s scary to be that close to something so big and powerful,” she says. “When you watch it on TV, it’s one thing—but it’s another to be so close and see the devastation.”

Lewis is proud newscasts can provide information about what’s happening in times of disaster, but she stays behind the security lines and obeys the rules. She’s not out to sensationalize the story.

“My job is to tell people what streets are open and what the situation is,” she says. “But when a police officer says it’s time to move, I move.”

Not a fan of the oversized, protective yellow pants some fire reporters wear, Lewis covers the story in jeans and hiking boots. “I own [the pants], but I find it too hot for those things,” she says. “But for me, a baseball hat is a necessity.”

At the end of a day keeping track of the flames, most reporters have a film of soot covering their face. “If you wipe it away, you get a big smear,” saysLewis. “So on days you’re covering a fire, appearance can’t be your top priority. You can’t be worried about how your hair looks, or if you’re wearing lip gloss.”

The 2003 fires taught Lewis to be prepared—to keep in her car a suitcase packed with essentials like “Fig Newtons, bottled water and toilet paper.”

“It’s a little bit tougher for a woman to go to the bathroom out there on a fire scene than it is for a man,” she says. The lack of privacy is often compounded by news helicopters circling overhead.

Before landing at KUSI, Lewis, a graduate of Cal State Northridge, worked at TV stations in Yuma, El Paso, Dallas and Los Angeles. Her parents were missionaries, so she traveled a lot as a child, living for long stretches in Spain and Costa Rica.

“As young children, my brother and I fearlessly traveled by ourselves across Spain on public transportation,” she says. “We learned to be prepared. And in the TV news business you have to be prepared for anything. Once, when I worked in Dallas, they told me out of the blue to go to Houston for a story. I wound up being there four days.”

That might require extra Fig Newtons and toilet paper.

Glass Slippers
Lena’ Lewis went to Temecula in August for a day of champagne tasting with her mother and boyfriend. It turned out to be a set-up. Mom and former KFMB-TV anchor/reporter Dan Shadwell had conspired to slip an engagement ring into Lewis’ glass of champagne. She heard a clinking noise when she took a sip, then Shadwell got down on one knee.

“We’ve only been dating since January, but I’ve known him as long as I’ve been in San Diego,” says Lewis. “I used to cover the same stories with him and I always told him I kicked his ass in the field.” Looks like Shadwell finally scooped her.