Me (third from right) in front of the State House and Governor's Mansion in Annapolis, with my Capital News Service reporting students, spring 1992.

I would like to be able to say that I knew from childhood I would find my way into journalism. It would sound so incredibly focused. But, truth is, I wouldn't be in this profession if I hadn't become acquainted, as a college freshman, with a doomed frog.

As part of a lab assignment, my zoology teacher told me to spear the brain of a frog, slit open its chest, and observe its still-beating heart. After much hesitation, I did as instructed, nearly passed out in class, and decided a career as a veterinarian wouldn't be the wisest choice.

Writing seemed the only logical alternative. I had always stolen time for books.

I switched my major to journalism and have not, as the cliche goes, looked back. I've never been without witty colleagues and satisfying work.

I got snapped up by a tiny weekly paper in Southern Maryland before I had donned cap and gown for college commencement. [I don't kid myself about my stellar qualifications; I may have been the only sap they could convince to work for $8,000 a year.] I later reported on county government for The Prince George's (Md.) Journal and on state and national politics for The Washington Times--eking out trips to Iowa during a presidential race, New Orleans for a National Republican Convention and Maryland's Eastern Shore to document beach erosion (during a toasty summer month, of course). I ran student-staffed news bureaus in Washington and Annapolis before taking other editing jobs with washingtonpost.com and American Journalism Review.

The pay early on was lousy, and the hours have often been long. But the rewards of meeting and writing about scores of interesting and influential people--including Olympic figure skaters, Scottish bagpipers, a children's book author and a future president--have more than compensated.

And, every once in a while, I wrote or edited a story that had an immediate and important impact on someone's life.

Sure, the people I've covered haven't always appreciated my efforts.

William Donald Schaefer in 1987

Former Maryland governor William Donald Schaefer (D) with regularity during his 1986 campaign insulted me and the other reporters who followed him from one political event to the next. ["How are you doing today, girls?" he'd greet the small band of mostly male reporters who had made it to the Baltimore street corner or blighted school ahead of him.]

In the mid-1980s, during one particularly acrimonious session of the Maryland General Assembly, one senator took to calling the Statehouse press corps "yellow journalists." [We, crazy cutups that we were, donned yellow T-shirts with the word "journalist" emblazoned on the back to salute the senator on the last night of the 90-day session.]

I perfected sprinting down hallways [in heels] in pursuit of then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry (D) and learned to stake out Capitol elevators and subway stops for Virginia Sen. Charles Robb (D). Both were, at the time, dodging questions about the company they had kept at parties.

But other sources have been more eager to respond to my fervent queries.

In February 1991, I talked to the brother of a woman who had been lying in a vegetative state in a D.C. General Hospital bed for nearly 40 years. A former nurse at the hospital, Rita Greene had contracted tuberculosis while at work, spent a year in treatment, and then, just before her scheduled release in 1951, gone into cardiac arrest. Seven minutes passed before her heart could be restarted. Her brain was irreparably damaged.

When I called James Greene about his sister's case, he had already been battling D.C. government officials for eight years for the right to move her to a nursing home in Wheeling, W.Va., close to his home. He was desperate for any help the newspaper could give him. "It's a total joke that it takes so much to bring your sister home," he told me at the time.

When city officials finally approved the move later that year, James Greene called me.

He didn't waste any words. He just wanted to say thanks.

--Chris Harvey