After Columbia, Ms. Rojas was originally hired as a reporter trainee by WCBS and went on to work at WLS-TV, the ABC affiliate in Chicago, and at WNEW in New York before joining WABC, where she covered news in the metropolitan area and headed coverage of New Jersey. She remained until 1986 and later worked for WNBC. She retired in 1991.
Last year, she wrote “Fire Escapes: A Fictional Memoir.,” which she described as an autobiographical novel.
Of the many stories she covered, Ms. Rojas said, her favorites were those that made a difference in the lives of ordinary people, like the one about a little boy with muscular dystrophy.
His mother wrote to Ms. Rojas about their life on the 14th floor of a housing project with broken elevators. She sometimes had to call the Fire Department to get her son to the ground floor to go to school.
“So we went with our cameras, climbed up to see this boy,” she was quoted as saying in Ms. Marlane’s book. “I said to him, ‘What’s your problem? Lots of kids don’t want to go to school and would be happy.’
“‘No, school is so important to me,’” he said. “‘I need to go to school.’”
“‘Well, how would you solve this?’”
“‘They should give us an apartment on the first floor.’”
The story aired that night. A week later, after years of waiting, the family was moved to the first floor.
“And I realized how powerful a tool this was,” Ms. Rojas said, “to take the plight of a little boy in front of the City of New York and embarrass somebody who wasn’t doing their job. That gave me the greatest satisfaction.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
