GILROY
– Gilroy residents Gene and Kathy Sakahara saw a familiar face
on CNN’s evening news Sunday – their son. Tim Sakahara wasn’t the
subject of the news; he was reporting it.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Gilroy residents Gene and Kathy Sakahara saw a familiar face on CNN’s evening news Sunday – their son. Tim Sakahara wasn’t the subject of the news; he was reporting it.
Tim’s report about a CH-47 Chinook helicopter shot down in Iraq was picked up by CNN Sunday Night and broadcast nationally.
“It was exciting to see him,” Gene said. “(But) obviously tragic about the news.”
It was the first time the proud parents were able to watch their son broadcast live. Tim, who grew up in Gilroy and graduated from Gilroy High School in 1994, is a general assignment reporter with ABC affiliate KOCO in Oklahoma City. Gene has contacted satellite TV companies to get KOCO, but the channel is only fed regionally, he said.
The Sakaharas also recorded their son’s broadcast, after Tim’s wife Karisse called them 10 minutes before air time because she could not get her VCR working. The Sakaharas did not know whether Tim would appear on regular CNN or cable channel CNN Headline News, so they taped both.
“He did great. It was fun to watch him,” Gene said.
Tim reported live from Fort Sill, the Army post 90 miles outside Oklahoma City that lost 6 of the 16 American soldiers killed in the attack on the Army helicopter. Fort Sill has 3,000 soldiers serving in Iraq. Many of those killed Sunday were on their way home for a scheduled reprieve.
CNN, which works with local affiliates nationwide, contacted Tim through KOCO at 8 p.m. Sunday to ask if he would go live for the network at 9 p.m. (7 p.m. in Gilroy). Tim was planning to report at 10 p.m.
“Our time got cut in half … there wasn’t much time to put anything together and prepare anything,” Tim said. “I think it was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been in my whole life. I’ve done hundreds of live shots in my career, but none obviously that went onto the network to a nationwide audience.”
Although he has yet to see the whole report, Tim said he is pleased with the way he handled nerves that surpassed those he felt even on his wedding day last year.
“I don’t think I was quite as eloquent as I could have been, but … I’m pretty pleased with how it went,” he said.
Tim joined KOCO just three weeks ago, after working for two years at the smaller ABC affiliate KDRV in Medford, Ore.
Tim’s interest in journalism didn’t surface until he took a communications class during his senior year as a political science major at the University of California at Los Angeles. He interned at Fox Sports News and CNN’s Washington, D.C. bureau before joining San Jose NBC affiliate KNTV.
