STREET STORY

Harry Swets isn't your typical reporter. Known on San Francisco's radio airwaves as "Hooks," he is a fifty-year-old double amputee who walks with a limp and has hooks for hands. But it's not so much his disability that sets him apart as his life-style: Swets is homeless, a street reporter who literally reports from the streets as a free-lance correspondent for station KGO.

With no prior media experience, but with help from KGO producer Ken Berry, Swets began reporting on the homeless in late 1991 and quickly began winning awards. He received a gold medal for best human interest series from New York Festivals, Inc., a company that sponsors media contests, and one of his stories was chosen by the California Associated Press Television and Radio Association as best serious feature report. "I get better stories because I know the homeless," Swets says.

Producer Berry says he had been dissatisfied with the depth of most reports about the homeless, including his own. "I would parachute in, park the car, look for one or two articulate homeless people to talk to and leave," he says. "But that doesn't give you a feel for what it's all about."

KGO executives had considered disguising two staff reporters as homeless people and sending them out on the streets. But program director John McConnell, a board member of the San Francisco Council on Homelessness, decided to try something unique: he hired Swets, an easy-going artist and former hippie, as a stringer.

Swet's debut was a series on the elusive homeless children of San Francisco, many of whom are as young as nine. The story intrigued listeners, as have other pieces on veterans, disabled people, and the elderly who live on the streets.

"The public response is amazing," Berry says.

Berry recalls one particular bit of reporting on an unusually cold San Francisco morning that got quite a reaction from hundreds of Bay Area residents. "Harry called up about 1:15 A.M. and said, 'Ken, we have to go on because it's so cold people are going to die out there tonight. I've just walked through the area and there are people standing out there with no coats,'" Berry recalls.

The station put Swets on the air to pitch for help. The result: "Throughout the night," Berry says, "there was a steady stream of cars with people pulling up and donating their own blankets."

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