Ray Marcano

When I was health and medical reporter, a source of mine told me that the local children’s hospital was not sending babies to another local hospital for treatment, but would instead send them, via helicopter, to another children’s hospital – hundreds of miles away. And some babies had died in transport. And I wrote about that.

I talked to everybody involved. I had a source who gave me memos, detailing what was going on. There was a civil lawsuit involved, that I covered – all of that.

And at the end of the day, the children’s hospital finally stopped that practice. They finally started sending babies to the local hospital that could do the same care.

And when that happened, that’s when that light went [on]. Because it was like not only was this a fantastic story – forget for a second that that was a fantastic story – but at some point there is going to be a baby that got to the local hospital just in the nick of time and was saved instead of having to be put on a helicopter and transported hundreds of miles away.

That was a time that the light went [on], and I went, ‘Boy, this is something that can really change lives.”

And about two weeks later I got promoted to a desk job, and that was the end of my writing career.