THIS TIME, DAVE LOPEZ IS THE STORY
The longtime local TV reporter reflects on love, life and work in a new memoir
Dave Lopez always knew he had a book in him.
After all, he'd spent 48 years as a TV news reporter on the scene in Southern California for plane crashes, earthquakes, celebrity murder trials and more.
But when he retired in June 2020, Lopez, 74, knew he didn't want to write the kind of stuff that often fills a reporter's memoir.
“There've been some terrific TV reporters and radio reporters and newspaper reporters that have written their memoirs,” Lopez says. “But I didn't want this to be, `And then I covered this, and then this happened, and this was behind the scenes.'
“I read too many of those books and I had an interesting life,” he says. “My father was quite a character. My mother, God bless her, was a saint. I was the oldest of eight.
“I wanted people to know what molded me, what made me become a success, if you will. What it was that happened early in my life that made me become, you know, the aggressive reporter that I was known to become.
“I wanted to find a way to blend that in and make it an interesting read,” Lopez says. “Not just what I covered.”
“It's a Great Life If You Don't Weaken: Family, Faith, and 48 Years on Television” achieves Lopez's goal.
Yes, there are stories aplenty about many of the big stories he covered. He writes of William Bonin, the Freeway Killer, who confessed to him in jail, and the midair plane crash over Cerritos that killed 82. He shares stories from the O.J. Simpson murder trial and the L.A. riots, too.
There are also happy stories of growing up in South Gate and working at his father's upholstery shop on weekends and of falling in love and marrying his high school sweetheart, Elaine, and raising two children. There are harder times, too, losing Elaine, and soon after, his mother, too.
“I had a couple of publishers that were interested in publishing the book for me, but they wanted me to knock off more of the family life and go more into what I had covered,” Lopez says. “And I just didn't want to do that.
“We self-published it because it was the way I wanted to write it,” he says. “Maybe if I had gone with a publisher it would have been a much different book. But it wouldn't have been what I wanted.”
Opening the book
From childhood, Lopez was fascinated by history as it happened, and “trying to capture moments” of the world in which he lived.
“I was very, very fortunate in my life,” he says. “Early in my career, when I started covering different things most people will never be able to see, I just started compiling things in my head.”
At the end of each day, Lopez made notes on what he'd covered in the annual calendars he got at the start of each year. (There's a photograph in the book of a stack of the calendars.)
When the pandemic arrived in March 2020, Lopez grew frustrated by its limits on the oldfashioned shoe-leather journalism he'd always loved. “It was just very difficult for me not to be able to be a hands-on type of guy,” he says.
When KCBS-TV, his home for most of his career, offered him a generous early retirement package in June 2020, he realized it was time.
“That's what really cemented it,” he says of the decision to write the book. “I said, `People talk a good game. People always say they're going to do things.'
“I said, `I'm going to do it.' ”
Early days
The title “It's a Great Life If You Don't Weaken” comes from a saying of Lopez's father, Al Lopez, who played a significant role in his oldest son's life.
“My dad and I were real buddies,” Lopez says. “I was his shadow, basically, and he would tell all kinds of different stories.”
The early chapters of the book are filled with memories of life in his sprawling, vibrant family. Much of it comes from his memories and those of family members. The family also had home movies going back to 1955 that captured holidays, birthdays and events.
Lopez got his start in journalism when he helped launch a school paper at Pius X High School in Downey. A self-described sports nut, still in high school he got hired as a sports stringer, first at the South Gate Press, then the Huntington Park Daily Signal.
As a senior at South Gate High School, he met Elaine Ekberg and fell madly in love. One of the sweetest parts of the book arrives when he reproduces a very earnest and sincere three-page love letter to Elaine, off to Santa Barbara for her freshman year in college at the time.
“On TV and everything, I present myself as a hard-charging kind of reporter, sometimes more aggressive than people want me to be,” Lopez says. “That's just my character.
“I also had a very soft side,” he says. “I still do. I'm a real sucker for a sob story. Love my kids and had a wonderful, wonderful time raising them.”
All the news
Whittling down the news stories and TV anecdotes to include was the hardest part of writing the book, Lopez says.
“I couldn't make the book 840 pages like [Barack] Obama wrote and then you get, `And now my second year of presidency for the next book,' ” he says. “I just wanted to get a good blend of different things that had happened.
“It was going back through all those little calendars. I would look and I could visually see that day when I covered the story.”
In 1972, Lopez jumped to television news. First, at a tiny Long Beach cable newscast, then at KHJ in Los Angeles, eventually landing in 1977 at KNXT, which later became KCBS, where he stayed the rest of his career. At the time, Lopez was one of the first Latino reporters on Los Angeles television.
Not everything was a big headline on the evening news, either. Scattered throughout are the smaller, unusual moments he encountered. The mother of one of the victims of serial killer Rodney Alcala sneaking a gun into court before deciding she wouldn't shoot him after all, for instance.
“Different funny little anecdotes with Robert Schuller,” he adds about the pastor who founded the Crystal Cathedral. “Him hitting me in the rib cage and saying to me, `What do you think of my glass shack?' ”
Looking back at his career gave him a sense of just how good it really was, Lopez says.
“You hear so many guys say, `I'm the luckiest guy in the world,' ” he says. “I look back and I say, `You know, it really is almost a miracle that I was able to last 48 years on television — and all of it except for nine months in Los Angeles.' ”
Life today
Today, Lopez happily spends his time with his wife, Diandra, in his home in Long Beach or hers in Silverado Canyon, or with his children and grandkids.
Still, one wonders if he misses the rush of breaking news and life on deadline.
“I don't miss it,” he answers. “I had my run. I had a great one. I've even had people say, `Hey, you ever think about coming back and doing this or that?' And the answer's no.
“I had my time and it's now for me to sit back and relax for the first time in my life. The news business, you never really have that.
“It was a great run, a great, great career,” Lopez says. “I wouldn't change a thing. Maybe the only thing I'd change, my wife and mother wouldn't have to suffer the way they did.
“But other than that, I was able to do it all. I really was.”
“I wanted people to know what molded me, what made me become a success, if you will. What it was that happened early in my life that made me become, you know, the aggressive reporter that I was known to become.”
— Dave Lopez, longtime TV reporter