What to do when Olympic star is caught in rain, traffic?
It was a news crisis of epic proportions!
At our afternoon news meeting, it was decided that a local appearance by Olympic darling Simone Biles was a story that warranted front-page play in all editions. Word was passed to staff writer Katlyn Smith that she'd have to hit a deadline for the earliest zones.
One complication, Katlyn noted, "Simone is not talking to the audience and won't do an interview and appears to be in a rush because she's dropping the puck at the Hawks game tonight and got here late."
This was late Wednesday afternoon, and the appearance of the teen gold-medal gymnast at Oakbrook Center was delayed by a storm rolling through the area. Plans by local gymnasts to perform for Simone were washed out, too.
Hmm. Would a story about a celebrity in our midst still be Page 1 news if we couldn't talk to said celebrity? Katlyn noted she had talked to our suburban gymnasts and coaches.
Problem solved! I reminded Katlyn of a discussion we had very early in her career, when she was preparing to cover TV talk legend Regis Philbin's appearance at North Central College. If all we do is show up and play back what Reege had to say, I told her, it would be a story that could have happened anywhere, run in any paper in the nation. Let's talk to the people who come out to see him, why they did so, what they think of the guy, I said.
Katlyn, an intern at the time, came through with flying colors. In fact, not only did she talk to locals, she made a Philbin story talking about his time in Naperville a key element and she got some one-on-one time with him. (Regis' first question to Katlyn: "Did you read my book." Yes she did, as a matter of fact. We were all impressed by Katlyn's diligence, and hired her as a full-time reporter soon as we could.)
She learned that lesson well, as her intro focused on Sanjana Kumar, an 11-year-old Lake Zurich native who wanted to make a strong impression on her idol, so she carefully rehearsed what she was going to say. When her moment came, Katlyn reported, Sanjana was ready.
"You flip so high," she said.
Those precious little moments of our suburbanites' brushes with fame are gold to us.
As luck would have it, the suburbs were treated to two appearances in the past few days by Olympic gymnastics stars. Mary Lou Retton, who became an Olympic legend at age 16 by capturing the gold medal in the all-around competition at the 1984 games in Los Angeles, appeared at Judson University in Elgin, and told a crowd of about 300 how she recalls the exact moment she decided she wanted to be a gold medal gymnast: it was watching Nadia Comaneci score the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics eight years earlier.
"I can remember telling my mom with a passion, 'I'm going to go to the Olympics just like her. I'm going to win a gold medal, not for that country, but for ours.' As silly and as crazy as that seems, I dreamed about that moment every single night as I lay in my bed," staff writer Krishnamurthy reported her saying.
As as she routinely does when she cover's Judson's World Leaders Forum Inspirational Series, Madhu made sure she got some one-on-one time with Mary Lou. I didn't edit Madhu's Q&A, but I read it in our print editions, just because I was curious about the questions she asked and what this long-ago star had to say.
My favorite part: How totally unprepared a teen from a coal-mining town in West Virginia was for stardom.
"I literally thought that I'd go to the Olympics, that would be great, my dream would come true, and I would go back to West Virginia and finish my 10th-grade year in high school, maybe go out for cheerleader."
jdavis@dailyherald.com