Becoming 'Utah's storyteller'

He was an anchor and reporter for KTVX for three years before he became creative director and senior producer for KUED, which allowed him to tell his stories in the long, detailed forum of documentaries. (In 2005 he was given the added title of director of production services, and his focus now is on mentoring the station's next generation of documentary producers.)

There is an adage that journalists write the first draft of history. Verdoia views his career as the opportunity to write the next draft, and he relishes that, because his job is his hobby. He loves history the way most men love football.

"I just want to watch something on TV for entertainment," says his lawyer-wife Carol. "He wants to watch documentaries, and he reads all the time." At the moment Verdoia is reading four history books, and he's reached the halfway point in all of them — books about Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Jackson, the Battle of Stalingrad, and a biography of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Verdoia's own work has earned him 17 Emmy awards. His documentaries have been added to the curriculum of some 200 colleges and universities in disciplines ranging from constitutional law to environmental studies, civil liberties and history.

"I'm contributing pages to the American story," he says.

His documentary "Skull Valley" explored the controversial plans to store nuclear waste on Utah's Goshute Indian reservation by telling the story from every point of view — Native Americans, the government, the nuclear power industry.

He spent three months sleeping in shelters and working in soup kitchens to make a documentary about America's homeless families. He spent nine months working closely with polygamist communities around the West to tell their story, becoming one of the first to be allowed to take a camera into their sacrament meetings, conferences and classrooms.

To make "Shadow of Hope," his treatment of undocumented immigration, he alternately crossed the border several times with illegal aliens in the company of coyotes (smugglers) to test the integrity of the border (he crossed successfully) and then joined the border patrol to chase illegals as they crossed the border. He also profiled a family from Wendover and visited their hometown of Juchapila, Mexico.

"It's like peeling an onion," says Verdoia of his work. "You peel each layer back and something reveals itself, but you don't know what's at the center until you get there."

When Verdoia arrived in Utah 30 years ago he never expected to make the state his home, but that's what it has become. He quickly fell in love with the accessibility and variety of the state's terrain — "If I still lived in California, the first four hours of driving wouldn't get me past the concrete," he says — as well as the rich history it offered a storyteller.

"Then the people here have always been accommodating, willing to share their stories," he says. "Utah has tolerated my knocking on the door and asking questions."

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E-mail: drob@desnews.com