"My career has morphed into two things," longtime News4 reporter Pat Collins is fond of quipping. "I cover murders, and I measure snow."
But Collins — who announced he will retire from News4 at the end of the year — has done so much more than that. And to the D.C. area, he is an institution.
He tells the stories that will break your heart. He tells the stories that will crack you up. He tells the stories that will leave you in tears — of sorrow, or laughter. Many times, the entire newsroom has stopped to watch a Collins piece as it airs live, the normally bustling space fading into relative silence.
A true D.C. native, Collins grew up on H Street NE — back "when H Street wasn't cool," he clarifies. He started in the newspaper business in his teens. By the time he graduated high school, he was editing three pages and had his own column in Washington's Daily News.
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"I learned to write from a bunch of grizzled old newspaper guys who kept throwing stories at me to write and told me, do this and do that," he recalls.
His love for news grabbed him early and didn't let go.
"My father was a doctor, and somewhere it's written that you have to be a doctor if you're the son of a doctor," he said. His father tried to dissuade him, telling him reporters were "deadbeats."
Obviously, that warning didn't stick.
"I was in college for three months and started my own newspaper," Collins said, "and then changed my major from biology to English."
Collins was a newspaper reporter, an Army medic in Vietnam, and later moved into television, including a stint in Chicago before returning to his hometown. Collins joined News4 in 1986, and over the years, he covered some of D.C.'s most enduring mysteries: Dana Chisholm. Robert Wone. Chandra Levy. Relisha Rudd. He can tick off the details at the drop of a hat, even years later.
"Never mess with a mother on a mission," he says, recalling the strong mothers of victims: Susan Levy; Kathy O'Dell, whose son at AU was killed by a hit and run driver; Jackie Winborne, whose daughter went missing. Collins has said that when he covers a murder, it may be the last thing that people who don't know the victim say about them, and he's felt it was a duty to do it right.
But then there's the other side. The lighter side. Collins' snow coverage has been a winter storm staple in the D.C. area. He'd put on his enormous down coat, nicknamed "The Solution," and trudge out to his bellwether corner in Northwest to banter with anyone brave enough or desperate enough (hey, someone really needed a sandwich, OK?) to be out in the snow.
Endlessly memeable, Collins has popped up on John Oliver's HBO show, "Last Week Tonight." He made it to "Autotune the News." He suited up in a Wayne Newton costume in Las Vegas while covering the Caps' Stanley Cup bid. And he famously donned a grape outfit (rented from a Springfield costume shop for a hundred bucks, if memory serves) to interview a high schooler suspended for running across a football field while wearing a banana costume. It's still showing up on Reddit years later. (Subreddits have included ChaoticWholesome and NottheOnion, both fairly good descriptions for Collins in general).
When Pat Collins talks about his career, he talks about the people. The people whose lives he covered and whose losses he documented.
And he loves to talk about the people who inspired him in the business, who made News4 a better place. Of course, here at WRC, we all think that of Pat Collins himself.
In News4's daily morning meeting, he was often fond of saying, "Here, and at the ready." With his Sharpie marker and his notepad, he always was.
We will celebrate Pat Collins more in the coming days.
