BY ALAN BLANCHARD

Herald Adviser

alan_blanchard@cornerstone.edu

I was 28, working a swing shift as news editor of The (Vacaville, Calif.) Reporter, one night between my 1983-to-1985 stint at this newspaper between San Francisco and Sacramento.

I edited news stories, wrote headlines (story titles), crafted photograph cutlines (captions) and monitored the police radio.

Moving from Washington, Ind., to Vacaville, Calif., in 1983 was a homecoming. I had lived in Vacaville when my father was stationed at Travis AFB. I finally graduated from first grade in Vacaville… as an Air Force brat I had already attended four different first-grades all in that same academic year!

But I digress … suddenly urgent messages crackled over the police scanner … shooting … residential area … armed gunman … holed up.

My reporter and photographer raced to the scene. Scribbling notes from the police scanner, we learned that a drunk, wheelchair-bound, paraplegic Vietnam War veteran was wildly shooting his rifle in this otherwise tranquil neighborhood. A police officer was shot as he exited his car.

Urgent “officer down” messages blared over the scanner … police descended upon the crime scene en masse.

I grabbed a “city reverse address-to-phone-number directory,” found a neighbor’s phone number, dialed it. One ring, then a gruff voice said, “What do you want?”

Then it hit me. I was talking to the gunman. Angry about the war, his wife had left him, happy he shot an officer, didn’t want to live.

I prayed, worked up my courage, told him: “Do you know that God loves you?”

That was not in my job description.  But my faith compelled me to share with this “hopeless” man, hope with a capital “H.”

He became agitated, made another comment, hung up. The gunman eventually surrendered. He went to murder trial, ended in hung jury. He was convicted at the second murder trial. I testified at both. The officer died, leaving a widow and several orphaned children.

With negative stereotypes of reporters in mind, some church folks ask, “Why would a Christian work in secular media?”

To that I say, if God really “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that no one would perish,” doesn’t even the media profession have need for a little bit of salt and light?

Whether you become a professional journalist or something else, God wants to work through you as His salt and light in a world desperate for true hope.

Alan Blanchard is director of CU’s journalism dept. — www.cornerstone.edu/journalism