ovalenzuela@hawaiinewsnow.com
Click here for Oscar's blog "The B-Roll"
It was a knock at my door that launched my career.
A recruiter for the U.S. Marines stood there, asking me if I had any interest in seeing the world. Are you kidding? I quickly responded, of course I would.
Next thing I knew I was leaving my hometown, that Parking Lot that is Los Angeles, as a Marine Corps Combat Cameraman. Traveling to places round the world I never would've dreamed of otherwise. My journeys in the service took me to Korea, Japan, Guam, Thailand, Wake Island, and a 6 month stint in the Persian Gulf known as Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
Stationed in Hawaii by 1990 I was here to witness and record the devastation caused by Hurricane Iniki on the Island of Kauai. I also had a chance to partake in the 50th anniversary of December 7th, 1941 at Pearl Harbor. I witnessed so much in those six years of service that it felt like twenty. I count those days as some of the most notable moments in my life.
The time then came to find the civilian equivalent to my duties as a military cameraman. I mean, really, what other job could be as fulfilling as the one I had just left?
Television News, of course.
Camera: check.
Travel: check.
Rifle? Okay, maybe not (Doesn't really fit the job description).
The job however has supplied me with a mother lode of stories to tell. The Corps exposed me to a world of exotic locales, now the news business allowed me to see home with a new objectivity. With an endless surplus of daily stories I've covered in the last 16 years, I wouldn't even know where to begin counting the tales.
But I definitely remember these:
- Trampling through tear-gassed rioters during the so called Battle for Seattle, during the WTO riots.
- Experiencing and covering Seattle's big quake and aftermath in 2001.
- Witnessing and covering an Air National Guard jet's fiery crash into an apartment complex in Fresno, California.
- Waiting for hours in court hallways to record brief glimpses of notorious criminals - including Washington State's Green River killer Gary Ridgway, Fresno's Dana Ewell, and teacher turned seductress Mary Kay Letourneau.
- Playing pool photographer for U.S. President's George Bush Sr., George W. Bush and then Presidential nominee Barack Obama.
- and just in 2009 alone, I had the chance to travel to most of the Hawaiian islands, to report from Japan's Imperial palace grounds and to cover the devastation in American Samoa's tsunami aftermath.
I began seeing life through the unflinching eye of a video camera lens when I was 17 years old. After 22 years, I still can't turn away. This gig has taken me to the far corners of the war torn Middle-East, to my home here in Honolulu and everywhere else in between. It's been my greatest privilege to share in the daily lives of thousands of people; the survivors, the heroes, and the heartbroken.
I am lucky enough to move on to a new venture here in Hawaii now, a new multi-media platform from which to tell stories. Having gleaned everything I could from some of the best journalists in the business, I will now be putting my own words to the images I capture, bringing you the viewer, my own stories to tell.
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