The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 171

SANDMEYER FINDS MAIN COMPETITION WITHIN HERSELF while he was off-duty. "She does a very good job. She serves a very useful purpose for the communi- ty" Tom Boysen, superintendent of the Conejo Valley School District, said he has "tremendous respect" for Sandmeyer. She has a knack for taking voluminous reports on various aspects of education and "turning pages into paragraphs." "She also does it in an interesting way and in a balanced way. She informs rather than propagandizes," Boysen said.

"She also comes to quite a number of our school board meetings at night. And then she has the early-morning news program. 1 don't know how she does it," he said. Actually, Sandmeyer admits, she doesn't do it as much as she used to. Meetings that last until midnight or later aren't too uncommon.

Attending them and reporting to work several hours later started affecting her on-air delivery of the news, she said. She now has a part-time reporter to help her out with meetings, and she is more confident of her professionalism. "I enjoy it," Sandmeyer said. "I really feel that I'm serving my community. I know that sounds "The worst part of the job is the frustration that I can't do more.

I set very high goals for myself and I can't do everything I want to do. "I'm always surprised when I meet people who listen to my news programs all the time. I take it as a real compliment because I don't think people will listen to you unless you give them the information that they're listening for." At times when she's feeling discouraged, a chiropractor in an office next to the radio station cheers Continued from Pace 4 She said she wouldn't be able to survive financially without her husband's salary. And, ironically, it was her husband who helped launch her career in radio news by suggesting she apply for a job at a station in Walla Walla. "I had no burning desire to be a journalist," Sandmeyer recalled, "But I was a college senior and needed to start looking for a job.

I was very inexperienced. I couldn't even thread a reel-to-reel tape recorder when I started." When her husband landed a job in Southern California as an assistant producer for the television program, "It is Written" at the Seventh-day Adventist Media Center, Sandmeyer was hired at KNJO. She's come a long way since not being able to thread a tape recorder. Thousand Oaks Mayor Lee Laxdal, who often is quoted by Sandmeyer in her news reports, said the KNJO reporter "can be very accurate and sometimes she can be very incisive." Laxdal also said Sandmeyer "wears well." He said she "does not come on to people in a manner that make you reluctant to speak freely to her. Others tend toward sensationalism.

She does not do that." Ventura County Sheriff's Commander Dennis Gillette, who is in charge of all the sheriffs officers patrolling the Thousand Oaks area, also has praise for Sandmeyer. "We deal with Willa quite often," Gillette said. "I'm very pleased with the energy and the enthusiasm and the objectivity that she brings to the job." Gillette said he listens to Sandmeyer's news reports in the morning to find out what happened KNJO-FM's Willa Sandmeyer her up. They sometimes meet at the back of the station next to the trash dumpsters "1 empty the garbage, too," Sandmeyer says sardonically. If a long climb from a Thousand Oaks radio station, which is ranked "somewhere in the top 500" in terms of listeners, and No.

1 -rated New York, No. 2 -rated Chicago or No. 3 Los Angeles, but Sandmeyer's listeners seem to think she can make it. For now, though, Sandmeyer says her goal is simply to "present information that people find useful or enjoy hearing. And I want it done accurately." The competition she feels most is not the race for highest-paying job but for the best-done news reports, she said.

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