Gotta Write

My grandfather spent some time as a private investigator, at least that’s what I’ve been told.  I’m sure he would have been proud of the lengths I had to go to the other day when I had an interview assigned to me that turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Most interview subjects contact me in an effort to get some publicity.  I’m happy to oblige because I like conducting interviews and as a result I have a lot of experience with conducting interviews.  The latest one I received, however, was a doozy.  I had to contact a hospital media relations person in a state I have never visited to conduct an interview about a subject to which this media relations person has consistently said, “No comment” to the press.

Luckily, I’m a gal who likes a challenge.

The directory for the hospital had the wrong name and number listed for the media relations department, so I had to make quite a few phone calls just to find out who I was supposed to be talking to.  I wound up leaving quite a few voicemails for her, and when it became obvious she wasn’t going to call me back I went on an Internet hunt for her e-mail address.  I’m fortunate to be able to find just about anything online, thanks to years of doing research for my degree and then for writing assignments.

I tracked down her e-mail address and tried to contact her that way, and eventually she replied with her “No comment.”  It was kind of what I was expecting, but I can’t tell you how pleased I was to have actually received a reply.  After all, some people may have stopped once they realized they didn’t have the right name and phone number for their interview subject.

Apparently my grandfather’s PI genes rubbed off on me.  Now if only I had also inherited some of my grandpa’s coolness genes….

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