An unexpected brush with Jimmy Carter
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Arizona Horizon host Ted Simons interviews former President Jimmy Carter on Aug. 3, 2015. Screenshot courtesy of Arizona PBS
I've never interviewed, met or interacted with Jimmy Carter in any way, but we nearly crossed paths in 2015 when I accidentally evaded his Secret Service detail without knowing the former president was even in the building.
Context: I've been a regular guest on the Arizona Horizon Journalists Roundtable since 2012.
- They tape the show on the sixth floor of ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
- Normally the roundtable guests go to the fifth floor and wait for someone to bring them up to sixth. At the time, we would generally wait in the green room until it was time to go to the PBS studio for the show.
Flashback: One Friday in 2015, I was waiting on the fifth floor when I saw a student walking out the locked door that leads to the stairway to the sixth. Since I'd been there dozens of times and knew where to go, I just went upstairs by myself.
- As I got to the top of the stairs, I saw two men in dark suits standing there. Neither appeared to give me a second thought, so I kept walking while wondering who they were and what they were doing there.
- When I walked into the green room, it was full of people I'd never seen before instead of my fellow journalist-panelists I expected.
1 big surprise: I looked at the TV in the room and saw Horizon host Ted Simons interviewing Carter.
- I quickly realized I was watching a live feed of Simons interviewing the former president, and that the men in suits at the top of the stairs were U.S. Secret Service agents. Apparently there were several others who missed me as well.
- As I was watching, producer Mike Sauceda walked into the green room and, with obvious surprise on his face, asked what I was doing there. There may have been an expletive or two.
- To keep the roundtable guests out of Carter's way, they were diverting us to another waiting room on the fifth floor, but no one had a chance to get me before I let myself in.
Zoom out: It's still a great story all these years later.
- I was recently sharing the memory with a fellow panelist s as we prepared for a taping. A few minutes later Sauceda came in and introduced us to one of the student producers.
- When Sauceda introduced me, he began telling her the Carter story. We all got a good laugh out of it.