Densho Digital Repository - Sharon Maeda Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-529-12)

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BY: And talk about your more recent jobs. I know that you worked again in radio and newspapers, so talk about your more recent jobs.

SM: In 2012, I believe it was, I was working for United Food and Commercial Workers as a special projects director working on external things that were not specific to grocery and retail but were more their community engagement work, which I loved. And they, at one point, asked me to step away from the union to start a nonprofit that would train the next generation of leaders. So I went to do that, but I told them, you know, I will set this whole thing up, but I really want to retire fairly soon. So I retired in 2015, and I'm just minding my own business in the Rainier Valley, a group that I knew a little bit about had acquired a low power FM license, but they didn't have the station on the air yet and they were running out of time, so they asked me to come help. So I was their first station manager, got the station on the air, and raised enough money for them to function, and then I retired again. [Laughs]

BY: Retirement number two.

SM: Yes. And then Marcus Harrison Green, who was the founder and editor of the South Seattle Emerald, took me out after I had retired that second time to congratulate me, and then he said, "Oh, by the way, could you help us out for three months? We're between managing editors and we need you to do that." He had just come back from a stint at the Seattle Times, so things were a little bit rocky internally. And he wanted to pull it all together again, and he needed somebody to do the day to day. So I said, "Oh, three months? Okay, I can do that." Well, that was January through March of 2020, and that was the pandemic, and then it was all hands on deck. So I stayed there until July of 2022. I gave up the editorial part fairly quickly, there's plenty of underemployed journalists around, but what they didn't have is a stable financial base. So I stayed on and raised money and helped plan a future for them. So I finally retired in July of last year.

BY: So is it sticking, the retirement?

SM: Well, yes. I mean, I'm still volunteering a little bit, and I'm still volunteering on various other community projects. But I'm not doing work-work. [Laughs]