Jim Laslavic, Jane Mitchell and John Weisbarth each has had strong ties to the Crown City for more than 25 years. Laslavic, NBC Channel 7/39's sports director and top sportscaster, has lived here since 1979. Mitchell, Cox Channel 4 San Diego's (4SD) creator of "One on One with Jane Mitchell" and winner of 20 Emmy awards, was born and raised here. And Weisbarth, Channel 4SD's host of the Padres pre- and post-game shows - and an Emmy-winner himself - has lived here since age three. Laslavic is elder statesman of the group while Weisbarth, 31, is the junior member.

Ask "Laz" about his many accomplishments (star linebacker at Penn State, 10 years in the NFL, sponsor of 20-plus years of charity golf tournaments) and you'll be confronted by his modesty. Bring up the year he led the Detroit Lions in tackling and he likely will respond, "Thank goodness I was traded from the Lions to the Chargers." Interview him about Coronado's sports-TV triumvirate and he only wants the spotlight on Mitchell and Weisbarth. He is very fond of "Janey and John," as he calls them, and it shows when the three are together. "I wish I had Jane's talent and John's future," he says.

Mitchell and Weisbarth share many similarities, aside from being Coronado High School grads and being employed by TV-4SD. Both realized at relatively young ages that they "wanted to be on air," as Mitchell puts it. Both have put in long, dreary hours in internships and low-paying jobs, while assigned undesirable working hours. Despite working for a sports-oriented TV channel, neither is a "sports nut." Both still have Coronado family. And both have fathers who were career Navy men; both get a bit choked up and teary-eyed when discussing their dads.

Mitchell and Weisbarth, however, traveled different pathways to reach their current on-air jobs. Weisbarth has been a natural entertainer since an early age and performed in many children's parts at the Coronado Playhouse. That experience, plus summer San Diego Junior Theater camp in Balboa Park, landed him the lead role in an independent motion picture released in 1990 by Questar Pictures called Treasure. When discussing Treasure, Weisbarth laughs and rates the movie "terrible."

Mitchell is a dyed-in-the-wool career journalist, having obtained her master's degree from Northwestern's prestigious Medill School of Journalism. As a high school student, she hosted "Coronado Corner," a cable- TV show broadcast here in which she interviewed community leaders. Considering that experience, it probably was only natural that her first big recognition at 4SD came after her 1997 interview of Padres' third baseman, Ken Caminiti, winner of the 1996 National League MVP award.

From that interview "One on One" was born. Says Mitchell, "All I needed was a green light." Given the goahead, she created a new journalistic art form: the in-depth interview of the well-known sports personality. Most San Diegans will recognize the names of her subjects: Tony Gwynn, Junior Seau, Jerry Coleman, Doug Flutie, Dave Winfield, LaDainian Tomlinson, the late Ted Williams - the count approaches 100. According to Laslavic, Gwynn had high praise for one of her interviews of him, saying it was "the best one" he ever participated in. Laslavic recalls being interviewed by Mitchell in 1980 when he was playing middle linebacker for the Chargers. Even then, he remembers that she asked insightful questions, producing a quality show.

Weisbarth's path to broadcasting success was more circuitous. Laz claims that a presentation he gave at a CHS Career Day in the early '90s was what it took to get young John hooked on broadcasting, abandoning a promising career as an engineer, but Weisbarth chuckles when he hears Laz's claim and promptly rebuts it as pure fantasy. According to Weisbarth, although he thought Laslavic's presentation was great, he didn't believe broadcasting would be practical for him since he thought the odds of getting in front of a camera weren't good.

Not until a college professor challenged Weisbarth during his sophomore year at UC Santa Barbara, did Weisbarth fashion a 5-year plan to become a broadcaster. However, it was not an instant fit, recalls Weisbarth's father, Doug. The senior Weisbarth recalls John's play-by-play coverage of the UCSB's men and women's volleyball and basketball teams. Says Doug, "I remember thinking, 'maybe we should be looking for another line of work.'"

Weisbarth's skills have obviously matured, and in truth, Laslavic did open doors for him. Weisbarth readily credits Laz's influence and personal contacts among San Diego radio and TV personalities in helping him land local internships in both TV and radio that started his professional on-the-job training. Their mentor-protege relationship has grown over the years; of Weisbarth, Laz says he is an amazing talent and that he "doesn't realize how talented he is."

Ultimately Weisbarth's pure energy and force of personality moved him from unpaid internships to desk jobs paying starvation wages to his first professional on-air work - albeit in radio - for xtra Sports 690. But announcing Friday night sports still didn't pay the rent. Throughout those lean years, John had to work for his dad in property maintenance to make ends meet; he gets choked up when he admits how much his dad's unflagging support means to him.

Like Weisbarth, Mitchell's strong willpower has proven to be an essential personal asset. While hunting for her first professional gig, she sent out 30 interview tapes to TV stations, and drove 3,000 miles in three weeks throughout the southeastern United States to interview with 29 news directors. She ultimately drove two hours in a blinding Texas rainstorm, then waited another two hours to be interviewed - an experience that produced her first reporting job at KAUZ-TV, Wichita Falls.

Mitchell has overcome much adversity to achieve success: excessive shyness as a young child, potentially crippling scoliosis as a young teen (in which she endured six-hours of bonegraft surgery followed by six months in a body cast), and sexist behavior from one of her early TV bosses. Yet each trial seems to have made her stronger. Upon conquering scoliosis she resolved to "do something important with my life," and to make her parents proud of her. And when dealing with that sexist boss, she says she prevailed because "I was a good reporter."

Mitchell takes great pride in "bridging the gap" between sports heroes and the children who look up to them in her interviews for "One on One." She points to frequent encounters with fans who express their appreciation for the wholesome messages conveyed during her interviews. She specifically recalls thanks she received from a young father with a 12-year-old son who watched the Caminiti interview and heard the former player's advice to youngsters to avoid drugs and to stay in school.

Mitchell's greatest career hurdle may have occurred when her father began to suffer from Lou Gehrig's Disease (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS). She quit a news-broadcasting job in Tulsa to return home to Coronado, despite being warned that that she would never be hired in the business again. Her response, predictably, was classic Mitchell: "I can always get another job, but I can never get another father." She and her mother became her dad's primary caregivers until his death in 1994.

To re-start her journalism career, Mitchell took a writing job at NBC 7/39. Then in 1996 she accepted a four-month contract from TV 4SD to produce and report a one-hour program broadcast only in San Diego, for only 14 days, covering the Republican National Convention. From that beginning, she was fortuitously positioned to move into 4SD's coverage of the San Diego Padres during Cox Communications' first contract year with the team that included a 120- game broadcasting package.

Four years later, Weisbarth was covering high school sports for HBS Productions, and his show was broadcast on 4SD. Soon he would be hired by the station where he began hosting the Padres pre-and post-game shows, working with former ballplayers as analysts. His first on-air partner was popular ex-Padres player and coach, Tim Flannery. One day after Weisbarth began hosting the show, his father Doug retrieved John's old baseball card collection and found a card with the handwritten words, "my favorite player." It was Flannery's card - funny how things work out.

Laslavic, Mitchell and Weisbarth have extended their public visibility via an entirely separate medium, that of high-profile charity work, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for selected charities. Laz, a member of Coronado's Rotary Club, recently sponsored the club's "10th Annual Jim Laslavic Charity Golf Tournament."

Several years ago, after watching her father struggle against ALS, Mitchell helped establish the San Diego Chapter of the ALS Association. In her current capacity as the chapter's board chair, she leads the chapter's funding programs to support UCSD's ALS research lab, and guides the chapter's community awareness and outreach programs. And Weisbarth recently emceed a Breitbardt Hall of Fame event whose purpose was to bestow San Diego State scholarships on deserving student athletes.

Fittingly, this sportscasting trio is best known in Coronado for their generous support of the Coronado Schools Foundation. Weisbarth cohosted the event on one occasion and Laslavic and Mitchell on many more. Weisbarth also has manned the phones for the foundation's annual telethon, while Mitchell co-hosted the most recent CSF telethon. When highprofile personalities use their deserved celebrity to champion local causes, the Coronado community scores big time.