Farewell Daily Pilot, Newport-Mesa

When I moved to California four years ago from Ohio, I knew almost nothing about this state except that it has traffic, great weather and earthquakes.

But boy, has that changed since Nov. 3, 2003 — the day I started working at the Daily Pilot.

Now, more than 1,850 articles later, I could probably name half the state legislature (OK, there would be some guessing).

I know all about environmental impact reports (long and often disputed), urban runoff (bad for the ocean), domoic acid (kills birds and other animals), what the acronym TMDL stands for (now I’m just showing off).

I could write a dissertation on local and statewide issues surrounding immigration (both legal and il-).

Friday was my last day at the “Daily Plot,” as the old-timers call it — I’m off to a new gig at the much larger (and for that reason scarier) Riverside Press-Enterprise.

My job here has been an incomparable learning experience, a heck of a lot of hard work, and sometimes ridiculously fun.

At what other job can you ride in a cattle drive, see presidential candidates (and the actual president!), tour ocean-front cottages at Crystal Cove, attend a murder trial, watch federal immigration agents at work, and travel 16 nautical miles off the coast for the last rites of a fake riverboat that used to be a restaurant and museum?

I’ve met loads of interesting people that make up this one-of-a-kind community: Jack Hammett, who has served Costa Mesa and the nation at all levels; Art and Mary Ellen Goddard, who have few resources aside from their time but give of that freely; our own intern Heidi Schultheis, a mature-beyond-her-years Newport Harbor High School grad who now sends us bulletins from Georgetown; the many passionate activists in Newport Beach on a variety of issues, like Greenlight leader Phil Arst; Newport Beach’s uber-competent assistant city manager Dave Kiff; and Balboa historian Gay Wassall-Kelly, who knows everything about Newport history, if you just give her a minute to remember it.

As a reporter, I’ve tried to be accurate and fair. But as Daily Pilot editor Tony Dodero has written before, we’re human, so sometimes we screw up.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’ve either heard of or made the following mistakes: misspelling names, listing incorrect ages, attributing an incorrect outcome to an election (that one wasn’t me, I swear), attributing statements to the wrong person — I’d better stop before I irreparably damage the profession with too much honesty.

But I digress. My purpose in writing was really just to say thank you to anyone who’s ever talked to me, listened to me, returned my calls (nuts to you if you didn’t) and read and commented on my work.

Every day I worked at the Daily Pilot, I was getting paid to do a job — sometimes a frustrating, even annoying job — but it was a job I cared about.

Even when I didn’t like it, I couldn’t, as Homer Simpson says, “just go in and do it really half-a___d.”

I’ve invested so much into this job, to leave now is like putting down a novel before you see how it ends.

In Newport, I want to know how the city hall ballot campaign will go — will it be vicious, with negative mailers? Will there be legal challenges?

How will the vote in February go? Then what? And what about new group home rules — will the city get hauled into court, and by whom? Will the residents ever be pleased with the outcome?

And if these cities are soap operas, Costa Mesa is a whole different show. The cliffhanger this season is whether Westside redevelopment will be stymied by the poor housing market.

And will 2008 council elections be a repeat of 2006, with immigration as a central issue? Will there be political smearing and by whom?

I’ll have to get used to being a spectator, not a chronicler, of Newport-Mesa events.

But the separation was inevitable — unless we’re hit by an unexpected asteroid or Orange County falls into the sea (hey, that could actually happen!) the story won’t have an end any time soon.

So even after I leave, I’ll probably keep tuning in to find out what’s next in our little soap opera by reading the Daily Pilot.