Teen Proves a Smooth Talker as Radio Host

Roger Hedgecock and Stacy Taylor, beware. Chezare Hines has got your number, and, for an hour Wednesday, the youth of San Diego had his.

At a few minutes past 1 p.m., the precocious 15-year-old signed on as guest host of Taylor’s afternoon talk show on news/talk radio station KSDO-AM (1130). For the next hour, he fielded a steady stream of calls, gabbing away with his peers about everything from teacher pay raises and excessive homework to gangs and abortion, from skateboarders’ rights and how to deal with the homeless to free speech for hate groups and whether or not to install condom vending machines in junior high restrooms.

A month before, Hines, a ninth-grader at the O’Farrell School of the Creative and Performing Arts in Southeast San Diego, had written KSDO a letter, suggesting “a talk show for kids, with me as the host.”

“I think a show for kids to be able to call up and talk with a kid would be great,” he wrote. “They could call up and talk about anything.”

Hines, who wrote that he was a regular listener and frequent caller to KSDO’s talk shows, gave as his host credentials his natural ability to be “funny, smart and spontaneous,” and even suggested a title for the feature: “On the Lines With Chezare Hines.”

The letter, KSDO executive producer Gayle Lynn Falkenthal said, “was so full of confidence that I just had to give him a shot.”

Hines entered the broadcast booth Wednesday wearing a black KSDO T-shirt and clutching two cans of Pepsi. He sat down next to Taylor, donned a pair of headphones, adjusted the microphone and patiently waited as Taylor delivered the introduction: “The next hour is going to be devoted entirely to kids, and by that I mean anybody from the age of verbal acuity all the way up to high school is welcome to call, and everybody else is excluded.”

“If you think this is some kind of a setup, where I’m going to be throwing the switches and handling the talk show while Chez is just merely a glorified guest, dealing with the calls, you’re absolutely wrong,” Taylor said. “We’re going to turn this baby over to Chez, and he’s going to be conducting the whole hour, hands-on, taking the calls, reading the screens, going in and out of the commercials and virtually everything else.”

After a brief break, Hines took charge with the aplomb of a seasoned broadcaster--and the candor of, well, a 15-year-old kid.

“We go to Alena, of Spring Valley,” Hines said, introducing the first caller. Alena said teachers’ salaries should be increased “because their job is really hard, and they go through a lot during the day.”

Hines agreed. “Being a, I won’t say a goof-up, but a boisterous student, me and my friends do get on teachers’ nerves,” he confessed.

The next caller, Jennifer, complained about too much homework.

“We have a lot of school, and then we have homework for the rest of the night, and we don’t have time to do what we want to do, like watch TV,” Jennifer moaned.

“Get it, girl, I know what you’re talking about,” Hines said. “I don’t know who they think we are; we have extracurricular activities, we have a TV, we want to play baseball, football, basketball, and we don’t have time to do all that homework. It’s like going to school, and then going right back to your home school.”

During the next break, Hines introduced commercials and plugged KSDO, then segued back to open phones, sharing his opinions with youthful callers on such issues as the minimum wage for teens (“We ought to get paid what adults get paid, if we do work that’s up to standard”) and the city’s ban on riding skateboards on sidewalks because of the potential for destructive stunts. (“They should bust the few who do it and leave the sidewalks free to those who are out skating, having a good time, without messing with, or destroying, things of other people.”)

Only when the phones temporarily stopped ringing did Hines lose his cool.

“We need more callers--would somebody please call in?” he pleaded. “There are no more people on the lines; everything was going fine. . . . We could use somebody to call in. . . . Let’s take a break.”

During the break, all five phone lines lit up. Hines’ moment of panic subsided and after the last commercial, he returned to the air as self-confident and as much in control as before.

Eleven-year-old Melissa called from Allied Gardens to say she was worried about the homeless problem and said the government should spend less on defense and more on people.

“That’s true,” Hines said. “We’re just building airplanes, tanks, missiles that are blowing up over the ocean . . . but what about the people who are walking the streets with no food, no homes, no clothes?”

Trisha, 13, from East San Diego called to say she wants to see condom vending machines installed in the girls’ restrooms at her junior high school.

“You’re absolutely right,” Hines said. “They should sell condoms on every junior and senior high campus, in both girls’ and boys’ restrooms.”

Midway through the final break, Hines looked over at Taylor and grinned. “This is great,” he said, propping his legs up on the broadcast-booth table. “I could really get used to this.”

Hines, whose family lives in Southeast San Diego, has studied drama at Junior Theater and regularly acts with the New Image Teen Theater. The bilingual youth (he speaks Spanish fluently) said he hopes to become either a radio talk show host or a movie actor.

So how did he get interested in issues-oriented talk shows when most kids his age are lapping up rock ‘n’ roll?

“My mom started playing it in the mornings and I just took an interest in it,” he said. “I like knowing things, so I started listening to talk shows at night, then in the morning before school, then in the afternoon after school.

“Talk shows are good forums for talking about issues that might go undiscussed.”

Before he left the station Wednesday, Hines told KSDO management that he’s ready to come back and do it again--and again--if they want him. The station is thinking about it.

“He’s better than I could ever have expected,” said executive producer Falkenthal. “We’ve had professional media people as guest hosts in the past, and many weren’t nearly as confident, as self-assured, as Chez was.

“He’s at that age where he has no fear, he knows everything and he has an opinion on everything--which is exactly what you need to be a talk show host.”