MIAMI – As a breast cancer survivor, Robin Roberts and Amy Robach inspire me every week day on ABC News' Good Morning America. But I wouldn't be a regular ABC News viewer if it wasn't for Kelley Mitchell.
I was learning how to live as a breast cancer survivor when Mitchell, a reporter I listened to regularly on National Public Radio's WLRN 91.3 FM took the time to talk to me about her experience after she was diagnosed in 2002. We met at her office at the former Miami Herald building.
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I had finished chemotherapy, surgery and radiation in 2012. My hair was short. I felt like the shadow of the woman who loved traveling alone, going paragliding in South America, working 15 hour days, working out and socializing until 2 a.m. I was living in fear. And Mitchell's bravery was an inspiration.
"You can't let the fear of getting sick again rule your life," Mitchell said, while she advised that I leave the Miami Herald, an organization I had been a part of since 2004 when I walked in as an intern. They were my family when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and loved me when I returned after 6 months of treatment.
Miami's ABC affiliate Local 10 News, her former employer, offered me a job. I was going to turn it down. She wanted me to accept it. Her words were my mantra, as I made the challenging transition two years ago. Last week, she sent me a message on Facebook and I was going to write back on Monday, but I never got to it.
She died Sunday of natural causes. She was 58. Her husband, WSVN-7 chief photographer Kirk Wade, whom she wed 7 years after her breast cancer diagnosis, told friends he was with her when she died.
WLRN Public Radio and Television reporter Nadege Green, formerly of the Miami Herald, wrote on Facebook:
When I made the leap from print to radio I was stumbling with learning the new technical stuff. Kelley Mitchell told me not to sweat it.
"You may not know the technical digital stuff yet, but you know journalism. That's really all you need to know," she said.
She recently messaged me with a story tip because "it had Nadege written all over it." She passed away yesterday. Go with God newswoman.
The last message she sent me on Facebook was painful to read. She was a tough mentor, and was not afraid to offer harsh criticism. And as a lover of truth, I craved her honesty.
"There is no such thing as a personal Facebook page, when you are a member of the media," she said in her message. She added this applies to Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and any other form of social media I use.
An unexpected wave of regret hit me and almost knocked me down. I held back tears. Former Miami Herald reporter Edna Buchanan, who was also a mentor, taught me in my early 20s that there is no crying in the newsroom.
I didn't visit Mitchell when she spent a month in a hospital room after a lung infection last year. I didn't give her Welsh Corgi dog Oscar a gift when he had been undergoing treatment for cancer. I didn't send her an encouragement card when WLRN let her go and she began working with 610 WIOD.
I never told her how much her courage and bravery influenced my life.
To many in South Florida, she was known as a powerful voice of the afternoon drive-time news on the NPR station. She was Rick Sanchez' sidekick on the WSVN-7 anchor desk and was a former Local 10 News anchor.
She grew up in Oklahoma. Her mom was a teacher. And she started her journalism career as the editor of her high school newspaper. She worked in television in Detroit and Pittsburgh before her 1991 move to South Florida. She covered presidential inaugurations, Papal visits, the Elian Gonzalez saga and the John Glenn space shuttle launch.
And although I admired her long career, what really inspired me was her life after cancer. I shared the Local 10 News' obituary on Facebook Monday afternoon. Breast cancer survivor Maria Snow, 47, of Delray Beach, was moved. She had never met Mitchell or followed her long journalism career.
"She lived 12 bad ass years after diagnosis," Snow said on a public Facebook post. "She is our hero."
