DESIREE HORTON

'Desiree Horton' is a helicopter pilot and television personality based in Los Angeles, California. Nicknamed "Chopper Chick," Horton is, except for brief stints by Julie Horvath and Kris Kelley, the only female helicopter pilot/on-camera reporter in the history of Los Angeles television.

Contents

Career

Popularity with viewers

External links

References

Career

Horton was born on May 18, 1971 and was raised in North Hollywood, California. She began to fly at age 19, shortly after high school, and worked two jobs for 2 1/2 years to pay for her training: "I could only afford to take lessons once a week or once every other week as I made the money to pay for them." She also washed local pilot/reporter Scott Reiff's helicopter in exchange for flying hours. She and earned her pilot's license at 21, and since then has flown traffic watch, tours, frost patrol, charter, medical and organ transport.
From 2001 to 2005, Horton flew and reported for KABC 7 in Los Angeles. She was with KTLA 5 in Los Angeles from April 2005 to October 2005, flying their helicopter and reporting traffic and breaking news for the ''KTLA Morning News''.
Horton says the most significant event she ever covered was the kidnap and murder of five-year-old Samantha Runnion in 2002. "I hate to bring this up, but I was the first one on the scene when they discovered her body in the mountains. The police hadn't covered her up yet, and with my 1,000-millimeter zoom lens I could see everything."^[1]
Since 2005 she has split her time between two jobs: In the summer, she fights fires by helicopter for the United States Forest Service. Only about twenty women are certified by the USFS to do this.^[2] She was featured in the August 2007 issue of ''Wildland Firefighter'' magazine, in an article detailing her flying career.^[3] In the winter, she reports breaking news in the evening and at night for KNBC 4 in Los Angeles.
Horton has also worked on a number of motion pictures where her helicopter served as an aerial camera platform. Horton and the helicopter have appeared on camera in several films. She is one of just a handful of female SAG/AFTRA chopper pilots. Her films include: ''American Icarus'' (2002), ''Showtime'' (2002), and ''One Six Right'' (2005).
Horton has her own company, Horizon Helicopters, Inc., in Studio City, California, for production jobs.

Popularity with viewers

When KTLA replaced Horton late in 2005, popular media-tracking weblog ''Innocent Bystander'' said it subsequently received so many "hits" from people searching the Internet for Horton that it had to post an online warning saying it might be forced to shut down for a few days. This had never happened before.^[4] Due to KTLA's distribution via satellite as a "superstation," viewers from as far as Canada wrote to complain that Horton was no longer on the ''Morning News''.
Horton derives great satisfaction from fighting fires because she's saving people's property and maybe even their lives. She says it also provides an additional enjoyment that comes from making full use of a chopper's unique capabilities.^[5]
Horton maintains a blog, ''The Adventures of Chopper Chick'', so her fans can keep up with her activities and ask her questions. She set up the blog after learning there were so many people asking about her on the Internet. "I didn't realize how many fans I had and how many people cared [about me] until I was gone [from KTLA]," she said.

External links

★ Fineman, Ron, "I Couldn't Help But Notice", ''On the Record'', May 6, 2005

★ Lee, Shirley, "Pilot Desiree Horton Reported on Traffic, but Prefers Fighting Fires", ''Airport Journals'', December 2005

★ Ross, Paul M. Jr., "Price Valley Rappellers Fight Fire Across the Country", ''Wildland Firefighter'', December 2006

★ Sassaman, Gary, "Breaking Copter Chick news...", ''Innocent Bystander'', March 25, 2007

★ Lyons, Amy, "Fighting Fire", ''North Valley Comunity News'' (use ctrl-f to search for 'Fighting Fire')

★ "desireepics" photo album at Flickr

References

1. Kodash, Dirka, "Buzz L.A. Archetype | The Life of a...News Copter Pilot", ''Los Angeles'', April 2007
2. U.S Forest Service certification for Desiree T. Horton
3. Ross, Jr., Paul, "Updates on Fire Aviation Folks...", ''Wildland Firefighter'', August 2007
4. Sassaman, Gary, "Bandwidth Alert", ''Innocent Bystander,'' November 23, 2005
5. Sassaman, Gary, "Desiree Horton: In her own words", ''Innocent Bystander'', November 01, 2005