The search for news is never ending for journalists, who are forever haunted by the shadow of an impending deadline.
We know that we have to fill up the space we are given in each week’s edition, but we often begin those weeks not exactly sure how that’s going to happen. Yet it always does.
During the recent holiday break from school, this journalist spent more time at the newspaper than normal, seeking stories that would reflect and detail what was happening in San Benito County while trying to inform and entertain at the same time.
The newsgathering business is a tough one in San Benito County. Next year will mark 20 years since I was hired as a fresh-faced reporter at the Free Lance at a time that the community was exploding with growth and the paper came out five days a week.
Today, my face isn’t as fresh as it once was and the two local papers come out a total of two days per week while a website has become the daily template for information delivery. Instead of looking at these developments with pessimism, I choose to see it as a sign that our community still supports and cares about what’s going on around here.
Just last week, the journalistic juices got flowing as a call came across the scanner that got our staff photographer scrambling, ready to cover what sounded like breaking news.
A person on Cole Road in Aromas calledispatchers to say that she believed her husband may have found a human hand on their property.
We waited a few minutes after the first report came in to make sure we had all heard that correctly and eventually decided to head toward Aromas, unsure of the exact address on Cole, but at least knowing where the road was.
It took us about 15 minutes to get there on that late morning, and we drove the length of the road seeing neither a sheriff’s deputy nor a lady looking at a hand. We decided to retrace our drive on the road and our instincts paid off as we passed two patrol cars that surely were headed to the scene of this mystery discovery.
Having seen one too many sasquatch hunting shows on TV during the break, my mind raced about what we’d find. Sure, this could be a real human hand, but it could also be a piece of the elusive – and never before reported – Aromas Sasquatch, a creature that lives among the eucalyptus-lined hills in the western reaches of San Benito County.
We flipped around and pulled up to the gate where the deputies had parked. We identified ourselves as being with the paper and followed the sheriffs onto the property where they were met with a nice woman who seemed genuinely perplexed by the discovery.
She said her husband had found the hand outside on the property and moved it to the trash bin near the road so animals would quit playing with it. A deputy opened the can to reveal the hand. (“Sasquatch, sasquatch, sasquatch!” I thought to myself, figuratively crossing my fingers as I peered into the bin).
Fairly quickly, the deputy revealed the news to the lady.
“It’s definitely a squatch,” he said.
OK, that’s not true. He didn’t say that.
“It looks like it came from a raccoon,” he said, for real.
Checking it out for myself, I had to agree. It definitely wasn’t human, and it definitely wasn’t from a squatch, which in hindsight is a good thing because the Aromas Sasquatch would have a hard time in the wilds of San Benito County with only one hand, or paw, or whatever it has at the end of its hairy arms.
Our photographer took a picture of the hand, to show our colleagues back in the office what we witnessed and to perhaps aid the economy of Aromas by opening up sasquatch tourism opportunities when unfounded rumors of a sighting get circulated.
Adam Breen teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School and is a reporter for The Pinnacle. He is former editor of the Free Lance. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @AdamPBreen.
