Pictured L-R: Gardner & CBS (Phoenix) sports anchor, Tresa Tudrick, & her view from the pressbox.

By Brian Reed-Baiotto, Sports Editor

In our latest ‘where are they now’ story, we focus on a very tough lady and sports writer named Michelle Gardner.

In January of 2018, Gardner lost her job after 16 years of service to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

She covered high school, local college and minor league baseball, and did so with an unmatched passion.

With newspapers dropping like flies, though, Gardner was a casualty of mass layoffs.

The week of her dismissal would go from bad to tragic.

Just five days after clearing off her desk at the Bulletin for the last time, Gardner’s husband Jerry died from a myriad of medical maladies.

In the next year, her two closest allies at the newspaper (Brian Goff & Louis Brewster) passed away, and not too long thereafter, Michelle had to bury her younger sister and a dog.

Those were the worst of times.

Thankfully, I am thrilled to report that Gardner’s life has made a 180-degree turn, and she’s never been happier.

She covers Arizona State University athletics for the Arizona Republic, and occasionally some Diamondbacks games.

But we’ll get into that a little bit later in the story.

How did it all start?

Gardner graduated from Bishop Verot High School in Fort Myers, Florida back in 1979.

She met Jerry Gardner for the first time in the Miami Dolphins locker room.

At the time, Michelle wrote for the Naples Daily News, and he was doing some freelance radio work.

The drive to cover the Dolphins home games on Sunday’s tallied five hours roundtrip, but she never complained once.

Michelle and Jerry got married in 1992, and they moved to Southern California in 2001 after he took a job with an ESPN affiliate.

The Gardners lived in Pasadena, because the commute to LA wasn’t bad for Jerry, and at the time, Michelle was still looking for a job.

Michelle began freelancing and eventually got hired by the Bulletin.

She was a mainstay at high school and local college sporting events, and she also spent some nights in the pressbox at both minor league franchises (Quakes and 66ers) in the area.

Towards the end of her run at the Bulletin, her husband was suffering from diabetes and had liver problems that required dialysis.

Jerry Gardner’s health was too tenuous to get the knee replacement surgery he needed and it was a bad heart that caused his rapid decline.

Michelle was completely dedicated to her husband of 25 years.

During sporting events, she called home throughout to check in, and if he didn’t answer the phone, her mind went racing to worst-case scenarios in her head.

Jerry cared so much about Michelle and her career that one time he was laying on the floor after a fall for a couple of hours.

He wanted to wait for Michelle to get home from her assignment so he didn’t interrupt her duties as a sports writer.

There was also a time when Michelle was at a Los Osos water polo game and towards the very end of that contest, she got a call from Jerry saying that he thought he was having a stroke.

Needless to say, she got home faster than Jeff Gordon ever could.

And from there, things just kept getting worse.

Towards the end, Michelle did much of her work from home to keep an eye on her husband.

When an assignment called for her to be physically at a sporting event, she always left the door unlocked, which would allow paramedics to get inside their home if Jerry needed to call 911 for immediate help.

One week after checking Jerry into Pomona Valley Hospital, the love of Michelle’s life took his final breath.

It was a mixed bag of feelings.

She was devastated her husband and best friend was gone, but there was also a real sense of relief that he’s no longer in constant and crippling pain.

Just before his passing, Jerry posted online that the time is near and just how bad he felt that his wife didn’t get a real night’s sleep in forever.

What was next for Gardner?

She applied at several local colleges and universities in the hopes of landing a job as a sports information director, but didn’t get a whole lot of interest.

Eventually, Michelle decided to move to Arizona to be near a friend of 40 years, and with the hope of doing some freelance work for the Arizona Republic.

Gardner sent in her resume and some three weeks later, she was contacted by sports editor Mark Faller.

He apologized for the lapse in getting back to her, but explained the paper had just gone through a departure of some of its staffers, and there were two big openings, including the coverage of the Phoenix Suns and the other focused on ASU athletics.

To even be in a position to interview for this job, let alone accept it, Gardner credited SCNG sports editor Tom Moore for his glowing recommendation.

And when Faller called to confirm the job and her salary, Gardner was so overwhelmed that she temporarily dropped the phone mid-conversation and started crying.

Gardner had just gone through the worst couple of years that anyone could have imagined and now she had a prominent job with a comfortable salary.

The timing of the hire was a little inconvenient for all involved, because the ASU football program had already played its first four games of that season.

Michelle, however, jumped right into the deep end and never stopped swimming.

She’s on a first name basis with Bobby Hurley and Herm Edwards, the Sun Devils’ basketball and football coaches, respectively.

The first of which makes this writer jealous, because I’ve been a Duke basketball fanatic since I was 13 (starting in 1983).

Until COVID-19 brought the world to a halt, Michelle traveled to road games, including all Pac-12 schools except Washington State and Colorado.

Gardner’s job and the financial security that came with it were instantly life changing, and another perk is the happiness she gets from running into players that she covered during their high school days in Southern California.

She said her employer and the ASU staff and coaches are phenomenal in helping her get pertinent information and in touch with the coaches and players.

After all the ups and downs that she’s been through, Michelle doesn’t take a single part of her job for granted.

Gardner hopes in the next 18 months or so to buy her forever home in the Tempe area.

But for now, she is as content as she’s ever been.

And no one deserves that more than Michelle Gardner.

Lastly, I asked Michelle to comment on the following topics: what she misses most about her husband, her job covering ASU, the schedule during football season and some of her more memorable moments working for the Bulletin.

Said Michelle Gardner: “I miss a lot of things about Jerry, but I think about how he believed in me more than I did myself. He always thought I was meant for bigger things, and after his passing, I got my dream job. It’s fulfilling and challenging and I have this feeling of belonging. I love everything about this job and couldn’t be more thankful. It really has been a blessing.

In a typical week during football season, my schedule would go something like this:

Monday: press conference with Herm Edwards.
Tuesday: go to football practice, watch the first portion (40 minutes or so) until they get into the core of it, because that’s when the media is asked to depart. We usually go to the media room to wait for it to be over. It’s offense day, so that’s when I talk to the coaches and players from the offensive side of the ball.
Wednesday: is the defense day at practice, where I go talk to the defensive coaches and players.
Thursday: I do a lot of writing
Friday: is either travel or day off
Saturday: For a night game, I get there three hours early, read notes and prep for the game. I spend time talking to colleagues and getting information about the other team. Sometimes I don’t get home until after midnight or later, and sometimes I’ll watch the game again.

The most interesting time working for the Bulletin was definitely covering the Chino Hills basketball program when all three Ball’s were playing.  Chino Hills was 35-0 that year and they were beating everyone by 50 points. It’s the best basketball team I’ve ever seen. I thought Lavar Ball was amusing and entertaining. It’s fun to write about colorful people. Their games were selling out arenas in three hours. I remember one time they played in a 9 p.m. game at Mater Dei and the media had to be there by 4 to get in the building.

And finally, because of the recommendation of Tom Moore and getting hired by Mark Faller, I was given a second chance at life. I could not believe I went from the darkest days one could endure to this much happiness. I will never take one day for granted.”

Quotable:

SCNG Executive Sports Editor, Tom Moore: “I’m really happy to see her success. I’m not surprised, because she’s so good at what she does and she cares so much about the stories she writes.”

SCNG baseball writer, JP Hoornstra: “The thing I respected most about Michelle when we worked together is that she embodied what it meant for a local newspaper to carry institutional knowledge about their coverage area. In Michelle’s case, that meant college and high school sports in San Bernardino County. Her career arc is a classic example of someone who treated the little things with utmost importance and, ultimately, someone recognized that meant she could be trusted with bigger things too. I think anyone in any profession can respect that.”

Longtime photographer, Will Lester: “Michelle has gone through quite a bit the past few years. Losing her job and her husband in basically the same week. I’m so happy she has been able to start over again at a great paper in Arizona.”

Former Bulletin prep editor, Clay Fowler: “Michelle doesn’t let anything get in her way when she’s reporting a story. She’s not intimidated by anything, anyone or any hurdles that arise along the way. I think people pick up on her level of dedication right away, and it only makes them want to join any efforts she’s leading when she’s working a beat. I’m so proud of the way Michelle has thrived despite tragedies and difficulties in her life, including all the emotional and physical energy required to take care of her husband when he was suffering and the corresponding effort to pick herself up and not only move on, but thrive, get a new job and everything that comes with starting a new chapter in her personal and professional lives.”

Longtime sports writer, Steve Ramirez: “Michelle – like a lot of us prep writers – has a passion for the people and teams she covers. Good prep writers have to be grinders and she certainly has that mentality, looking and finding those stories that the readers want to read. There’s no reward for it, just the pleasure of seeing the success of the people you cover and she understands that. She’s a very hard worker, so it was nice to see that see landed on her feet in Arizona, making the big time of a major college beat, because of all that she went through. She deserved it.”

Former ASU player, and current SBVC men’s basketball coach, Quincy Brewer: “Michelle Gardner is simply the best. Her knowledge relative to athletics along with her passion for people and sports have enabled her to give an accurate synopsis of each contest she covers. Michelle truly loves athletics, the student athletes and coaches.”

Former CSUSB & current Saddleback College men’s basketball coach, Jeff Oliver: “What separated Michelle from everyone else was her passion. She reported the facts exactly how they were. She pushed and stimulated enthusiasm throughout the community for our program and Cal Poly Pomona. Our coaches, boosters, players and the Cal State community were very thankful for how much she promoted all sports.”

Longtime member of the Bulletin sports crew, Marc Garcia: “Michelle would not rest until she got her junior college sports scores in that day. She showed more passion and love to the junior college scene than anyone I have ever known in either department in my time there as a agate clerk. If it was up to her, she was willing and ready to put out front page worthy stories on women’s tennis. They had to restrict her words, because she wrote full-length articles on each sport and each school. She then transferred that passion of JC sports to the Bulletin side of prep sports. Even though she went strictly to prep sports in my last days there, she still made sure to show love to her junior college sports even, in spite of knowing the higher ups only wanted little info from the junior college/university sports programs. She also would have drove with her own money to be sure the CSUSB women’s volleyball team got the recognition they deserved during their championship runs in which they came up short. It was well deserved that she’s scored a gig covering a Division 1 program like ASU. Michelle even made sure college sports were taken care of on her days off. She showed a passion from the first to last day at that newspaper and that’s something we all respected.”