'For over 36 years, I was blessed': Lori Matsukawa anchors her final broadcast for KING-TV At 11 p.m. on June 14, KING-TV anchor Lori Matsukawa delivered the news to Seattle for the final time

KING 5's Lori Matsukawa anchors the 11pm show, her final live news broadcast before retiring after 40 years in the business, Friday, June 14, 2019. KING 5's Lori Matsukawa anchors the 11pm show, her final live news broadcast before retiring after 40 years in the business, Friday, June 14, 2019. Photo: Genna Martin, SEATTLEPI Photo: Genna Martin, SEATTLEPI Image 1 of / 38 Caption Close 'For over 36 years, I was blessed': Lori Matsukawa anchors her final broadcast for KING-TV 1 / 38 Back to Gallery

Lori Matsukawa thought she was going to work in newspapers. She studied at Stanford University, which had no broadcast program, and spent her summers back home interning at The Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

But when she graduated she sent out over 100 letters and applications and ended up with two options: Take an offer to be a business reporter for The Los Angeles Times, or report for a TV station based in Redding, California.

She chose the latter, saving print journalism as a backup plan for later in her career when she would be, in her words, "old and toothless." But after about 40 years on TV, it's clear she found her home.

Matsukawa's final broadcast aired Friday night. The decision was announced by the station in May, about a year after Matsukawa said she decided she was about ready to retire.

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"For the first time in 40 years I won an Emmy last year for this series on the Japanese internment experiences, and it was like a sign," Matsukawa told SeattlePI. "I had done this body of work, it was solid, it was something I could leave to KING, to the viewers of Seattle. So I could get up and retire now."

Matsukawa's Emmy-winning piece, "Prisoners in Their Own Land," was her magnum opus, something she had been working on for years, a story that hit close to home for so many Washingtonians, but hadn't been fully told. It described life for Japanese-Americans both in internment camps during World War II and after, and told of the ramifications of Executive Order 9066 from President Franklin D. Roosevelt that affected families for generations.

She said she worked on the story throughout her career, grabbing bits of history and creating the entire arc. She wanted to go beyond simply reporting that it had happened, and wove stories of the clashing groups of heroes that came from the camps: Those who fought for the U.S., and those who fought against the oppression.

"I wanted to leave one significant piece of work here at KING, so that people will have an understanding of what happened," Matsukawa said.

But before her journalism career began, Matsukawa wanted to be a piano teacher. That is, until she became a pageant winner.

She was looking for scholarship money to help with college when a friend told her about the Miss Teenage America pageant. Matsukawa applied, and the next thing she knew, she won.

Her senior year of high school was anything but normal, she said. Half the month she'd be in school, the other half she'd be traveling for the pageant. She then became aware of all the newspaper and TV reporters talking to her, everywhere she went.

"I thought, 'Wow, these people get paid to talk to people, I could do that,'" she said.

And she did.

At the station in Redding, Matsukawa met her husband, Larry Blackstock, who went on to become an operations director at Northwest Cable News and helped build the station in the 1990s on a floor of the building KING-TV occupied.

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From Redding, Matsukawa crept north to Seattle, with a 10-month stop in Portland at another TV station. She started her career in Seattle at KOMO-TV. What was one of her first memorable experiences reporting in the Pacific Northwest? When she was en route to a story when a volcanic eruption forced the pilot to turn around.

"The year I started at KOMO, Mount St. Helens blew up," she said. "I was working the weekend shift, and we were in an airplane going to do a story on clamming and the pilot says, 'Oh, we have to turn around and land because the volcano blew up,' and we looked out the window and wow, it was erupting."

She said the photographer accompanying her begged the pilot to stay in the air, but was unfortunately, and reasonably, overruled.

A couple years after the excitement of Mount St. Helens blowing its lid, Matsukawa jumped ship for KING-TV. Her stays at each station had been getting longer. She said she spent a year in Redding, 10 months reporting for a station in Portland, Oregon, and about 3 years at KOMO. However, when she nabbed a spot as the co-anchor for "Top Story" -- an in-depth program she described as a local "Nightline" -- at KING, she never left, a career move that continually rewarded her.

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A trip to China covering former Washington Gov. Gary Locke was one of Matsukawa's reporting experiences that stuck with her throughout her career. For 10 days, she followed Locke during his trip through China, including a trip to his ancestral village. It was "furious work," she said, that involved long days with the governor, and long nights putting together the stories and editing film. Story packages that at the time had to be sent back to KING via satellite.

"It was easily a 15-hour day everyday," she said. "We were working our heads off. That was just the most amazing experience in the terms of being a journalist because of what I learned about China and trade, and also what was possible, what I could do as a reporter."

It's not like Matsukawa was never tempted to leave KING. The station's parent network NBC even offered her a role as a correspondent based out of Burbank, California. But she turned it down.

"I couldn't see taking our son out of school, where he was thriving," she said. "And telling my husband, 'By the way, kiss your job goodbye,' that's crazy. So I stayed at KING and guess what? KING sent me to the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primaries. They sent me to cover hurricanes in Central America. I went to two winter Olympics, and I ended up going to Japan and China.

"Over 36 years I was blessed, because KING was dedicated to sending you where the story was."

As for what's on the horizon for Matsukawa, even she's not sure. But that's by design, and she's taking solace in that.

While she said her master plan was to transition from TV to newspapers, it changed after she received a master's degree from the University of Washington, while working still working at KING. After that, she thought she may teach after her broadcast career.

But for now, she's heeding the advice of a friend and taking one whole year off.

"I think it's a good time to change gears. It's going to be nice not living with so many deadlines. It's going to be nice to live on my own schedule."