Carol Watson, 33; Former Times Reporter, Screenwriter

Carol Allison Watson, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and Southern California screenwriter who recently sold producer Norman Lear on her concept for a TV series, died Monday at her mother’s Sacramento home. She was 33.

Watson died quietly, surrounded by family and friends, after a long illness.

Represented by the William Morris Agency, Watson had worked as a freelance screenwriter since graduating in 1995 with honors from the Graduate Writing for Screen and Television Program at USC. Watson was among the original crew of writers for the successful animated cable show “South Park” and had also worked with Will Vinton Studios, among others.

Last spring, shortly before she became ill, she made her pitch for an hourlong situation comedy to Paramount Studios and Norman Lear, best known for his “All in the Family” series.

“She had such a special take, we were all terribly excited about doing something with her,” Lear said. “She was aglow with all this creativity. She just charmed the hell out of all of us.”

Lear and his colleagues sent her off that day with a contract to write the pilot she proposed.

“I was sure I was going to know her forever,” Lear said.

Writing had always been Watson’s passion, her mother, Annita Watson of Sacramento, said.

“Even as a little girl at 4 years old, she would stage plays and dress people up in costumes,” Anita Watson remembered. “Every holiday we had to have a little drama.”

Born March 9, 1965, in Sacramento, Watson graduated from Rio American High School there in 1983. Four years later, she graduated from Stanford University with a double major in anthropology and English, earning honors in anthropology.

After a two-year stint as a reporter at the Times Tribune in Palo Alto, Watson joined the Los Angeles Times in 1989. She worked first for the Ventura County Edition and then for the Valley Edition, leaving The Times in 1993. Shortly afterward, she enrolled in the USC program.

Funeral arrangements, yet to be announced, will be made by Lind Brothers of Sacramento. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Sutter Cancer Center, the American Cancer Society or the Sacramento Children’s Home.