NBC 7's Gene Cubbison shares one of his fondest memories of former San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender.
As he now rests in peace, I'm imagining that Bill wouldn't mind me relating a couple of transactions between the two of us that illustrate a bond of trust that's become somewhat rare in this media age.
In 1975, he was assistant chief of police, on the verge of the City Council approving his nomination as chief, and I was a staff writer at the San Diego Daily Transcript.
It was my practice to pore through the paper's voluminous legal listings for potential story prospects.
One day I came across a notice of a William B. Kolender owing nearly $1,500 to the Bank of America.
I'd never met or spoken with Bill, and was a bit apprehensive dialing him up to find out what the story was with that unpaid debt.
I can't remember our conversation verbatim, but once I explained why I was calling, it went something like this:
Kolender: "Oh geez! Are you gonna report on this?"
Me: "I don't know, can you tell me about it?"
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Kolender: "(Pause) ... yeah, I'm going through a divorce. My wife maxed out the credit cards before I could cancel them. She just gave me the bills."
Me: "You're going to pay 'em off, right?"
Kolender: "Absolutely. I'm writing a lot of checks right now. Is this gonna go in the paper?"
Me: "Well, I don't know. Lemme talk to my editor, maybe we can hold off."
Kolender: "Oh, man, this is all I need right now."
Long story short, my editor Bob Witty agreed to let it go on the assumption that Kolender would clear up the delinquent debt, which he did.
Fast forward nine years.
By this time I'm an on-air reporter at NewsCenter 39, and had crossed paths with Bill on numerous story occasions, including the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre.
One evening I ran across Kolender and his wingman, Ron Reina, bellied up to the bar at a favorite watering hole of theirs.
Kolender: "Hey, how ya doin'?"
Me: "Not great. Channel 10's kicking our a-- on high school drug busts, and they're getting it leaked to them by your people."
Again, long-story short, I told him that one of Channel 10's photographers was married to a police lieutenant, and another was a reserve sergeant on the force.
Bill frowned, stubbed out his cigarette and reached into his pocket, fishing out some coins.
"Sit tight," he said. "I'll make a call."
A couple minutes later he returned from a pay phone booth around the corner and whispered in my ear: "Hoover High, 7 o'clock tomorrow morning."
Sure enough, when my photographer and I rolled up to Hoover not long after daybreak, officers were hauling juvenile drug dealers away in cuffs.
When Channel 10's photographer showed up a while later and spotted us working the story, he stopped in his tracks, almost backpedaled, and did a double-take.
There went his exclusive.
And better yet, Bill put a stop to the leaks.
Later on, we laughed about how that played out, and shared many more laughs over the years to come.
And I can't help believing that what developed between a local-yokel journalist and a high-ranking law enforcement officer would be hard to replicate in today's 24-second, social media-driven news cycle in which "Gotcha" is -- all too often -- the name of the game.
