KSRO’s Pat Kerrigan moves beyond the news, reveals something personal

Since telling her listeners about her treatment for alcoholism, beloved KSRO anchor and Kenwood resident Pat Kerrigan has been moved by the outpouring of public support.|

Radio news anchor Pat Kerrigan doesn’t normally report on Pat Kerrigan.

And typically when Kerrigan speaks into a mic at the KSRO studios in Santa Rosa, she’s as at-ease as you or I when we chat on the phone with a friend.

Kerrigan was uncharacteristically anxious as she went on-air days ago with a special bulletin, a deeply personal one.

“I am an alcoholic,” she broadcast to the world. “Maybe it’ll change your opinion of me.”

The Kenwood resident and well-?traveled elder of Sonoma County’s radio scene had been mostly off the job since October, without explanation beyond a declared need for some time to take care of herself.

The oft-honored media heroine of the 2017 firestorm revealed during her morning show last Monday that she’d checked herself into an inpatient treatment program.

“I felt like I owed it to our listeners and the community. I owed them the truth,” she said in an interview later in the week. “I really didn’t know what the reaction would be.”

She’s since been blown away by the support and gratitude that’s flowed ?to her.

“Your words might be the reason someone seeks out treatment!” one listener posted on KSRO’s website.

Another wrote, “Thanks for using your powerful voice to help reduce the stigma around seeking treatment for our struggles.”

And a third, “I am proud of your honesty and courage. Keep on going, Pat. We got this.”

Kerrigan, 64, certainly hopes that, this time, she’s got it.

“I am not by any stretch cured,” she said, adding that she has attempted before to free herself of alcohol addiction.

While her monthlong stay at a treatment center in Marin County was not her first go at rehab, she said, “I hope it will be my last.”

Kerrigan has been a familiar Sonoma County radio voice since 1980, when she joined the broadcast crew at the former KREO-92.9FM, a top-40 station. She hosted the morning show on the former Q105-FM country station for a dozen years and for a time was the a.m. co-host on adult contemporary KZST-100.1FM.

She’d been out of the business for a decade, and taking care of her elderly parents, when opportunity knocked. KSRO, the landmark news-talk station that dates to 1939, hired her in late 2016 to replace retiring morning host Melanie Morgan, who’d succeeded David Wesley Page.

Kerrigan was in the anchor’s chair at KSRO less than a year when the North Bay was struck by the deadly and catastrophic fires of October 2017. The broadcaster pretty much lived at the station for more than three weeks, interviewing fire officials and other authorities and providing essential, real-time information to evacuees and others who struggled to comprehend and navigate the disaster.

Kerrigan came to be celebrated in the company of former Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano and Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner as one of the highly visible, supremely dedicated individuals who led and comforted residents through the historic ordeal.

The on-air work by Kerrigan and her colleagues brought KSRO medium- market “Radio Station of the Year” honors from the National Association of Broadcasters, which also named Kerrigan the mid-size radio market’s Personality of the Year.

Kerrigan vanished from the weekday morning news show last October. Jim Murphy, the vice president of programming for KSRO and its sister stations in the Amaturo Sonoma Media Group, addressed her absence with an online notice.

“First and foremost,” Murphy wrote, “I want to stress that Pat will be fine and will be back.

“After taking on a tremendous amount of work in the community after the 2017 fires, Pat now simply needs some leave time, at least 30 days, to take care of herself.”

Kerrigan told listeners last week that after dealing with alcoholism for many years, “with varying degrees of success in that battle,” she went into treatment last fall.

“I took some time off in October,” she said. “But not enough. And not in the right place, either.”

She told listeners that in the latter part of October she returned to work earlier than she’d expected in order to report on the Kincade fire.

“I was in pretty good shape for a while. But the monster that is alcoholism does not diminish if untreated. And by early December it was back again with a vengeance.”

She was desperate. She said that in the past she’d managed to function, but late last year her drinking was impacting her work.

She felt, she said, that not only her job but her life was on the line. She would tell her listeners, “So many relationships were suffering, too.”

So on Dec. 17, she checked herself into a Marin County rehab facility “that at first glance looked more like a fancy resort than a place where alcoholics gathered at last resort.”

Kerrigan doesn’t say much about the treatment she received, beyond sharing that it involved classes and workshops. She has no interest in promoting any particular approach to recovery.

She did say that she found the Alcoholics Anonymous/12-step program was not for her. “I needed a more holistic approach,” she said.

Kerrigan speaks of gratitude to the treatment facility, and for the health insurance that allowed her to afford the care she received. She said she believes strongly that all who suffer from substance addiction should have access to such treatment, and that in the future she’ll advocate for that.

She’s hugely thankful, too, for the support of the KSRO owners and executives who held her job for her while she was in treatment.

For her to declare so publicly that she is a longtime alcoholic was liberating, but it wasn’t easy.

“I don’t get nervous very often on the air, but I was pretty nervous about that,” she said. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

Her revelation brought a stream of almost entirely positive comments from listeners, fellow alcoholics and people affected by alcoholism. “I couldn’t ask for more support. It’s humbling,” she said.

One of the people in recovery who’s cheering Kerrigan for going public is Jen Carvalho, CEO of the 60-year-old Azure Acres Recovery Center in Sebastopol.

“Unfortunately, the stigma is still prevalent,” Carvalho said. “We see it (alcohol addiction) as a health care issue and not the moral failing that it has been seen as for so many years.

“I really applaud Pat for speaking her truth so others will be emboldened to speak theirs.”

Kerrigan said she’ll be grateful if her on-air revelation serves to “move the stigma just an iota.”

You can contact Chris Smith at 707 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.

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