You see them on the local TV news broadcasts, but what do you really know about the people and their lives on the other side of the screen?
Like perhaps they have secret skills.
Sure, as professional journalists their private lives never get in front of the story they’re covering, but wouldn’t it be kinda cool just this one time to get a glimpse of their less camera-ready, less super-serious side?
We take you behind the camera to expose some of their hidden talents. Check them out.
Mike DiPasquale
Sports anchor at WSVN-Ch. 7
Secret skill: Powerlifter
He isn’t just grunting and dropping weights in the gym, DiPasquale is a powerlifting champ, even now at 62.
“People ask me, ‘Why, why, why,'” he says. “Because I want to and I can. I want to do it until I can’t. That’s the only answer I can give them.”
He started winning competitions right out of the gate back in 1992 while training for the Olympic trials in weightlifting, just missing qualifying for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta (which he ended up covering as a reporter for the Fox affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio).
“I fell in love with Olympic weightlifting watching ‘Wide World of Sports’ when I was a kid,” recalls DiPasquale. “And Vasily Alekseyev with the Soviet Union…he was the strongest man on the planet they said. And I was fascinated. But back in the late ’70s that kind of training was not in. The only outlets I had was to watch on television.”
Over the years, the Aventura resident played a lot of sports, including pucking around in a men’s ice hockey league and slip-sliding as a competitive bobsledder (he won the 1995 gold medal in the four-man bobsled at the National Empire State Games).
In 2005, DiPasquale tore the meniscus in his right knee playing hockey. Part of his physical rehabilitation was doing lots of squats, the motion at the base of weightlifting, so the sport became more of a focus for him.
DiPasquale went on to win medals in national and international championships, including earning a spot on Team USA at the 2014 Masters World Olympic Championships in Copenhagen. He won a bronze medal at the 2019 Masters Pan American Games in Orlando.
“It’s a grind and there are times you get up the next day and you feel like you got hit by a Mack truck, you really do,” he adds.
His next competition will be the USA Powerlifting Miami International Expo on June 5 at the Miami Airport Convention Center. He’s ready for it, doing a best bench, squat and dead lift with a total of 940 pounds.
A lot of South Floridians who see his sports reports daily on Ch. 7 and Sunday nights on “Sports Xtra” have no idea he’s a powerlifter.
“I really don’t talk about it,” DiPasquale says. “It’s not, ‘Look at me.’ It’s not about that. I do it because I want to do it, not for any accolades. My medals are in a box in a closet. I don’t hang them and look at them every day.”
Betty Davis
Meteorologist at WPLG-Ch. 10
Secret skill: Baker
Davis’ baking talents were handed down from her mom.
“I’m from a large Southern family,” she says. “My mother is one of the great Southern cooks. Her collard greens would be the best you ever had. Cake, pie, whatever — it will be the best you ever had.”
But what it really boils down to is having a good time, she says from her Cooper City home. “It’s just really fun. I always say that if you want to improve a relationship or grow a relationship, bake together.”
That’s how she vibed with her mother-in-law. “His mom is actually a baker, a professional level baker, like that.”
Luckily she’s able to resist the sweet temptations. “White flour is the devil. I have an amazing ability to bake and not consume my product. My husband will eat what I make. We’re trying to get the COVID 15 off me.”
Her favorite dessert to make is carrot cake, though it’s time consuming. “My youngest son is 13 and his favorite is vanilla cake. I’m from the South, so my pecan pie is one of my favorites.”
She’s going to have a pecan pie contest with her South Florida bestie Christie Grays Chambers, a commercial real estate exec.
“We met at Spelman [College] and have remained forever friends. We are supposed to have a pecan pie bake-off Fourth of July weekend. A viewer friend sent me pecans from Fort Valley, Georgia, and I have set aside a bag in the freezer for Christie. They are to be used during our bake-off. However, Christie says she may bring her own because I may have done something to those that I set aside.”
Miriam Tapia
Lifestyle reporter at WSFL-Ch. 39
Secret skill: Comic book connoisseur
Tapia was in high school when the first “Iron Man” movie came out in 2008. That’s when she became a self-described “comic book nerd” because something she saw up on the silver screen resonated.
“I saw ‘Iron Man’ and it completely did a switch on me,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I really love this.’ Just trying to figure out who this character was just thrilled me.”
Now her collection of hundreds of comic books and graphic novels fills her Coral Gables home.
“Batman is my favorite superhero on the DC side and Iron Man is my favorite on the Marvel side,” she explains. “They’re both the same, no super powers really. But they both have awesome story lines about their redemptions.”
She’s also got a sizeable collection featuring Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Bitch Planet (a series about a dystopian society where independent thinking women are shipped off to a prison on another planet).
“Wolverine…is my favorite because he such an a–hole, but if you really think about it, he has a heart.”
And Tapia found her clique, one that she has stuck with through college and into young adulthood.
“The community around it…they are so willing to help,” she explains. “You know how you feel accepted? I don’t know, it just felt right.”
She started going to comic book conventions, once meeting Jim Starlin, who wrote the “Infinity War” graphic novel, which was turned into two blockbuster movies, “Avengers: Infinity War” in 2018 and “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019.
“I don’t get star struck easily, but I was like ‘Ohmigod, you wrote “Infinity War,” tell me more,’ ” Tapia says. “Its such a pivotal story. It’s just that the stakes are so high. As a reader you are so invested.”
Of course now she doesn’t have time to visit every comic con that comes through South Florida or go back and forth to comic book stores (“I get it at Amazon”).
She does, however, make time to stay in touch with that community. “Now we have our own chat. That’s my core group, too. And they’re my best friends too because we constantly talk.”
And it has helped with her work at Channel 39, the CW affiliate.
“I got invested into storytelling and I think that’s why I’m in the journalism biz. It’s mostly good people doing good for others and that’s what I love.”
Janine Stanwood
Anchor/reporter at WPLG-Ch. 10
Secret talent: Artist
“I’m not sophisticated, but I am enthusiastic,” says Stanwood. “My style…is Janine. I’m all over the place.”
Stanwood’s genres include portraiture, abstract and mixed media. “I’m inspired by my surroundings and the people around me all the time.”
Back in the day the Local 10 News reporter was also an aide to a U.S. senator on Capitol Hill (just a hop and skip from her hometown of Annandale, Va.).
“If you look at my art [from that time] you can tell that as a young staffer I was inspired by the architecture…that reflected in my art back then,” she recalls. “Now that I’ve been in South Florida for such a long time, you’ll notice that my paintings are a little brighter.”
Those sunnier paintings fill her South Beach home.
“There are canvases and paint all over the place,” she says. “Friends and family, they have my art. I sold a couple of pieces when I was young out of necessity because I was moving and needed to get rid of some things. Now it’s really just for fun.”
But carving out time to paint is a little tricky, she says. “Of course it can be difficult juggling my night job as a reporter and this, but it’s a hobby, which I love. I paint on weekends when I can. If you wait for inspiration, you’ll be waiting forever.”
Stanwood thinks her next project might be a mural on the side of a vacation home the family has in the Keys.
Her artistic talent has paid off for WPLG. “At the station I’m always doodling little cartoons. So when Laurie Jennings and Max Mayfield retired, the news [team] trusted me to make the big giant cartoon, you know, a funny card that everyone signed.”
And it has paid off for her personally. In 2020 she survived breast cancer and thyroid cancer.
“I think I have really been enjoying painting….embracing the life we had. The pandemic and cancer has shown me what is important in life. And maybe to focus on the beauty of life, because I still really believe the world is beautiful place and full of good people.”
Nicole Linsalata
Reporter at WSVN-Ch. 7
Secret skill: Craft maker
It was always there for Linsalata, the ability to DIY arts and crafts.
“I was always a drawer,” she recalls. “Growing up, I always had…pen and paper. This was back before kids all had phones.”
Years later, while working in Atlanta as a TV reporter, she did a story on a group that made quilts for the police to hand out at crime scenes to comfort victims.
“I remember seeing in a corner this primitive patchwork quilt someone had done by hand and it looked kind of cool and I thought, ‘I could do that.'”
Before long — around 2001, four years before joining WSVN — she was scouring Salvation Army thrift stores, snapping up kids clothes, cutting them up and making Christmas blankets for her daughter and son, all by hand. “I actually have them now because they are too cool for it,” she adds.
While her son, now 18, has resisted the maker bug, her now 20-year-old daughter is starting to show signs that she’s inherited crafting skills, recently making her mom a wall hanging.
For herself, Linsalata says she has no idea where it all comes from. “The odd thing is I’m such a non-girly-girl and oddly I have the most girly hobby ever.”
For the Fort Lauderdale resident, the attraction is a way to Zen out and relax after the go-go-go nature of covering South Florida news.
“You can’t think about anything else,” she says. “Your focus is completely on what you’re doing…and away from outside stuff. I’m a person who has news channels on all day. Like all day. Sometimes it gets to be too much. Sometimes it’s good to refocus your focus, to have something else in your head that is a 180 from all this going on in the world.”
Well, almost completely. She has her craft table planted in front of the TV. “I’ll put on something stupid and work until 2 a.m.”
Projects include refrigerator magnets made out of hotel key cards, an elaborate pop-up gift box for a friend with her picture inside and a platter for her mother with photographs hodgepodged on it.
“My father worked for the airlines,” explains Linsalata. “So I found some vintage airline pictures. It was supposed to be something he threw bills on. [My mother] mounted it on the wall.”
Amanda Plasencia
Reporter at WTVJ-Ch. 6
Secret skill: Showtune singer
Many people sing in the car, but Plasencia sort of stopped traffic — at least her mother — with her voice when she was only in second grade.
“I was singing to ‘The Little Mermaid’ and my mom turned around and said, ‘Were you singing that?’ and then she said, ‘Oh my gosh, this girl’s got a good voice.'”
And even though she didn’t want to be a stage mom, little Amanda was signed up for voice lessons right away. Then the Miami native sang in the choir and did shows at Lourdes Academy as well as performing in the Miami Children’s Chorus. There was a trip to France where she did an opera debut.
Then it was off to New York University where she won a scholarship for vocal performance with a minor in communications.
“I did the whole auditions route, where you do all these auditions hoping for a callback,” she recalls. “I did some off-Broadway things….some experimental theater. I was almost ‘Dora the Explorer’ in the national tour, but another girl beat me out.”
The whole time she was a regular at the legendary Brandy’s Piano Bar on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She realized that what she loved about stage musicals and showtunes was the stories. And that led to her firing up that minor in communications and getting a job in news.
“I love storytelling,” Plasencia explains. “Plays are storytelling and performing is storytelling. So this is a natural transition.”
She worked with News 12 in the Bronx and Brooklyn for three years before going back to get her master’s in journalism.
Then in 2015 she and her husband, Tommy DiLillo, moved to South Florida, settling in Hollywood.
“My husband started to take an improv class to make friends. This was at Villain Theater in Little Haiti. I was watching him. So then one night I did it. And then they started musical improv and I was like, ‘This is my jam.'”
She laments the devastating blow theater was dealt with COVID-19 lockdowns.
“We can’t wait to dive back into Villain Theater. Small theaters, they really suffered during the pandemic. I really think it’s part of the human experience to have theater back.”
During the pandemic, when all the stages and performance spaces were shut down, she and her husband started posting “Musical Mondays” videos on her Facebook page, singing from her songbook of favorites such as “Somewhere” from “West Side Story,” “Tomorrow” from “Annie,” “Blue Bayou” by Linda Ronstadt and “Smile” by Charlie Chaplin.
Though the soprano (with a strong middle range) says she enjoys giving her own take on “powerful female singers” such as Ronstadt and Whitney Houston, she is a Broadway belter at heart.
“Definitely the Broadway genre for sure,” she adds. “That’s my go-to. That’s what I feel most comfortable in.”
Willard Shepard
Anchor and investigative reporter at WTVJ-Ch. 6.
Secret skill: Pilot, boxer, lawyer
Growing up in St. Louis and Chicago, he played a little tennis and a lot of basketball, football and hockey. “My sisters thought I might be the first Black man in the NHL,” Shepard says.
Instead — after graduating cum laude from Temple University (where he did play-by-play at the school radio station) — he ended up one of the few Black fighter pilots in the Air Force.
“You know when you’re deboarding a plane and…there’s a pilot there saying thank you…as you exit? Ever notice how that pilot standing there is rarely a Black person, or a woman or a Latin person? One of the reasons for that is getting an aviation education…is extremely expensive. It takes a massive amount of money. Airplanes. Fuel. The military is the only way that the vast amount of people can get the qualifications. There’s no better training.”
After graduating from U.S. Air Force Officer Training School, the Miami resident went on to serve in the Air Force as a Gulf War fighter pilot, flying 52 combat sorties over Iraq and Kuwait.
He has also flown for NATO and Southern Command doing missions such as flying air photographers into hurricanes, searching for missing boaters and helping security with the airspace over Mar-a-Lago. He was also the first Air Force pilot to fly the Soviet Mig-29 fighter.
Now as a leader in the Civil Air Patrol’s civilian wing, he is mentoring minorities in high school about attending the Air Force Academy.
“These young people, they can go anywhere they want to,” he explains. “I want these kids to know that there is someone who looks like them flying aircraft.”
And it has served WTVJ well. As an aviation expert, Shepard is able to add insider info to stories such as commercial airplane crashes.
“It can take months for the NTSB to see what actually transpired,” Shepard says. “There are radio frequencies that you would know about as a pilot that are used by these airports. So, we’re listening to whatever [the pilots and the control tower] says. That’s just a knowledge base. In our world, you have to bring people instantaneous information.”
He attended FIU’s College of Law starting in 2007, graduating in 2010 and passing the bar three months later.
“I saw the way our business was going. It requires a special skill set. The more things you have expertise in, the better it is as journalist. You have the contacts and knowledge.”
But when it comes to difficulty, pilot training and studying law pales in comparison to boxing, according to the five-time Emmy winner. After dealing with a torn meniscus a few times playing flag football and lifting weights, he was encouraged to find another way to stay active.
“So, I started boxing,” Shepard adds. “I started going to boxing classes at the Miami Police Athletic League. They really taught me how to box. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done…the level of strength conditioning, the cardiovascular conditioning. But it’s one of the most rewarding things in my life. It’s everything you got.”
And what he got was a win in the master’s division in Las Vegas about 18 months ago.
“Vegas is the pinnacle of boxing. That was my Floyd Meriwether moment.”
