Behind the Byline: Photographer’s award-winning career led her to Petaluma

Staff photographer Crissy Pascual officially joined the Argus-Courier team in June 2016. She arrived in Petaluma with an established career as a photojournalist, with a Pulitzer Prize to back that up. Last week, Community Editor David Templeton sat down for a Zoom chat with Pascual, asking some questions about her background, interests and pastimes, and what attracted her to a career in journalism.

Petaluma Argus-Courier: Basic stuff first. Where were you born, and how did you get into journalism?

Crissy Pascual: I was born in the Philippines, in a place called Quezon City, and I was 3 years old when my mom and my brother and myself immigrated. My dad had come a year before. I was born half on a jeep, on the way to the hospital, and half in the elevator on the way up. I guess I was very excited to be born.

PAC: Where in America did your family move to?

Pascual: We moved straight to the East Coast. I was raised in New Jersey. I went to Boston University for college. I majored in photojournalism. I knew that was what I wanted to do. I’d been working for my newspaper in high school, and I just knew I wanted to be a journalist. I thought I was going to be a reporter, but I was doing photo editing for the yearbook and the school paper, and I thought, ‘I’m pretty good at this.’

I had my dad’s old camera, and I was taking classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Which was fun for a 16-year-old. When my dad caught wind that I wanted to major in photojournalism, he got very upset. He said, ‘You can’t make a living doing that. No one does that as a job. That’s a hobby.’

I come from a family of mathematicians, so I think he thought I’d go into accounting or chemistry or banking or something. He actually drove from our house in New Jersey to Boston University to talk to the Dean of Communication, to verify that this is in fact something you can major in, and you can actually get a job as a photojournalist.

I guess he was assured enough, because he let it go.

PAC: What was college like?

PASCUAL: I had a very successful college career. I worked for the daily newspaper at school. I was the photo editor. Though I originally wanted to be a reporter, I decided to go strongly into photography because, as I like to say it, I got writer’s block in my freshman year. And I never got out of it, though I never really tried, I admit, because I just found it was so much more fun to be behind a camera. It was artistic and expressive, and it looked cool. I felt like a bad-ass, carrying all this gear around. There weren’t a lot of women doing it, especially back then. There were just a handful, so I totally followed their careers.

PAC: This was pre-digital cameras, right?

PASCUAL: Everything was film, which of course, had to be developed. Nothing was immediate, like today.

PAC: Your school had a daily newspaper. That’s rare for a college, isn’t it?

PASCUAL: I think there were only two in the country. Most colleges had weekly newspapers or monthlies, but this was a daily, so I knew that feeling of the midnight deadline. It was great. We were just a bunch of kids in this dark room, processing the film, drinking and smoking, hanging out eating Doritos and putting out a newspaper every day.

To circle back to my dad being really skeptical about my career choices, the day I graduated, the first President Bush spoke at my graduation. And that day, my dad said, ‘Alright, I’m just going to tell you. The reason I didn’t want you to go into photography is because my dad was a photographer.’ That was my grandfather, who I never met because we came here when I was so little. My dad never talked about him much, but I guess he was a photographer, and he was doing that during one of the wars in the Philippines. My dad lived near one of the Navy bases, and he used to sneak out and follow his dad when he’d go out to photograph things. When he’d get caught, he’d be sent back and told how dangerous it was. And the other thing my dad remembered was that the family was so poor, because his dad never really made any money.

I never knew that until the day I graduated. All of that happened back in the Philippines, and as far as my dad was concerned, that’s where it was going to stay.

PAC: What was your first full time job as a staff photographer?

PASCUAL: It was the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey. I chose it because at that time all newspapers in the U.S. were black and white, except for U.S.A. Today. And then the Asbury Park Press decided to dip its toes into color, doing color photos on the front page as an experiment. I wanted to be at the paper that was starting that trend.

PAC: I know you’ve worked at a number of papers on your way to Petaluma and the Argus-Courier. What are some highlights?

PASCUAL: The Boulder Daily Camera, in Colorado, was a great paper. I got to shoot a lot of sports there. I got to do things like Super Bowls and Stanley Cup finals. Probably one of the most famous stories from that time was the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, in 1996. It actually happened on Christmas Eve, and I was the photographer on duty that day, and I ended up being the first photographer on site, at the Ramsey’s house. So I got some of the earliest shots of that incident, mostly the police putting up the yellow tape.

So then I got a job at the Denver Post. Very much similar situations, covering Super Bowls and big events. Michael Jordan once touched my head. I was covering a game and he went up for a shot, and all the photographers were there, and normally players would just run into us. It hurts. That time, he leaped over me, and as he went back to the court, he touched my head and said, “You okay?” So that was kind of cool.

Probably the most well-known story I covered while at the Denver Post was the Columbine High School massacre. That was a strange, bittersweet time because our staff won the Pulitzer for our coverage of that, but I seriously still have some PTSD from it. I had the luxury, since I’m short, of looking like a high school student, so I got further onto the campus that almost anyone else. But it was really traumatic. It was really, really hard. Over the next few weeks I covered seven funerals out of the 14 who died. That was just a lot.

PAC: That was 1999. You started at the Argus-Courier in 2016. What brought you to Petaluma?

PASCUAL: Shortly after Columbine, I left to go work for the San Diego Union Tribune, and I was there for 10 years. What were some of the major things I covered? There was another school shooting, so I covered that. I was sent to New Orleans to cover Hurricane Katrina. And I got to work out of the Tijuana Bureau sometimes, because I speak Spanish.

I met my husband Brett while I was taking a video journalism course called Platypus. He was one of the T.A.s there. We got engaged a year later, got married on the beach in San Diego, I got knocked up and had our twins in 2014. And three months later moved up to Northern California for Brett’s work.

So I was a new mom with twin girls when we moved up to Petaluma. I didn’t know anybody, and didn’t know a thing about Petaluma. I honestly thought, at that point, that I’d left journalism forever. I’d left, and now I was the mother of twins, papers are closing and there’s no way I’ll ever get a job as a newspaper photographer again.

PAC: Then what? You saw an ad for a photographer at the Argus?

PASCUAL: That’s exactly what happened. I had been thinking, well, what my dad said all those years ago sure came back and bit me in the ass. But Photojournalism was all I’d ever wanted to do, and all I had ever done, the only job I ever had. I don’t know how to do anything else. And then, when my girls were two-years-old, I got a text from a friend with a link to, I think, a Craig’s List ad, saying that the Argus-Courier was looking for a part-time photojournalist. I applied, and sure enough, got an interview and got the job, and here I am, six-and-a-half years later. It was the best move. It’s been glorious. I couldn’t have asked to land in a better place.

PAC: Is there anything you’d like to say to close this out?

PASCUAL: Let me think. I sometimes get the question, what was your favorite photo, what’s the best thing you ever shot? I’ve shot a lot of pictures. I’m really proud of my career and everything I’ve done, but you know, I’m still learning. We are all always learning, hopefully, and so I think, maybe I haven’t shot my favorite photo yet.

Maybe it’s still waiting for me. I wonder what it’s going to be?