Hoover Zariani, director of GCC’s Center for Student Involvement, wrote for El Vaquero as a Glendale student about 20 years ago. Now he helps match student volunteers with non-profit organizations.

He said the skills he learned in the newsroom– including interviewing, researching and writing precisely — helped with his other classes and his career.

“In my work, I talk to a lot of students, but often I have to get a lot of information from them. It’s kind of like interviewing them… It’s a good skill to learn how to get information,” he said.

When he worked for El Vaquero, editing and printing the paper was more complicated, he said. Leaving the newsroom once at 3 a.m., he stared down two coyotes outside the door.

“I really enjoyed writing when I was younger, and several of my friends were also involved with El Vaquero,” he said. “For a while, I had thought about it as a potential career and wanted to see what it was like to help produce a paper…. It was one of the few places I could go where students were knowledgeable about many social and political issues, and we could talk about anything and have deep discussions.”

Zariani got accepted into the educational leadership doctorate program at USC. “Basically for two years, I will be taking classes, and the last year, I’ll be writing a thesis,” he said.