Some time again I wrote about one of my favorite editors, the late Larry Laurain. I was remembering Larry the other day and two funny things he once told me about my job.
Larry was a former police reporter, so there weren't many secrets I could keep from him.
Larry assigned me to fly to Tucson, Arizona to cover the arrest of a suspect in a case that originated in Pontiac, Michigan. The story I wrote for the Oakland Press ended up attracting the interest of a producer for the then popular show "Unsolved Mysteries."
It had to do with a man who had befriended a local woman, who prompty disappeared. To make things even just a little more suspicious, it was the fourth woman he had been acquainted with in his life who vanished off the face of the earth. (You would think the authorities would have gotten curious after the disappearance of the second woman, or maybe even the first).
The day after the show aired, the suspect who was watching the program, was caught after his Tucson landlord recognized him and called police.
When I returned from Tucson three days later, I was filling out my expense forms and Larry looked over, winked at me and said: "Any good reporter who files an out-of-town expense report and doesn't end up with enough extra money to buy a new sport coat has done something wrong."
Don't worry, I didn't pad my expense sheet, but it was a funny saying.
A couple weeks before Christmas, I was complaining to Larry that I didn't have time in my personal life for anything because of all the time (mostly unpaid) that I was putting in at work.
"If you aren't able to do your Christmas shopping on company time, I'm very disappointed in you."
That's why I loved Larry Laurain.
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