KUSI NEWSMAN REBUILT LIFE IN SOBRIETY AS SPEAKER

Say the name Rod Luck in the company of longtime San Diego TV news viewers and you’re bound to get a reaction. Luck, who passed away from cancer last weekend at age 72, counted on that. In fact, that was the colorful television broadcaster’s calling card.

From 1992 to 2008, Luck’s freewheeling and often corny hijinks on KUSI TV’s “Good Morning San Diego” show earned him lots of fans and more than a few foes. He talked about his unusual style of participatory journalism in a 2015 video posted on his personal website, rodluckonline.com.

“I was good at what I did, a true personality. And you know you’re a personality when they either love you or hate you,” he said.

Luck was also candid about the incident that ended his career with

KUSI, and how he worked hard to rebuild his life in the years that followed. In 2008, Luck pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge after slapping a woman friend in an alcohol-fueled rage. He took courtordered anger management classes, got sober and dedicated the next decade of his life to volunteer work and speaking to local schoolchildren about the evils of drugs and alcohol.

“Booze, drugs — too much tore me down,” he said in a speech to a high school class posted on his website in 2015. “That ladder that took so many years for me to climb to the top of, I came tumbling down one day. Slid all the way to the bottom. But I picked myself up and cleaned myself off ... The best times of my life were in the past six years.”

Luck’s widow, Susan, and his son, Christopher, declined to be in