Come Rain or Shine
By GWEN MURANAKA
Rafu English Editor
Friday, January 16, 2009

Kimi Evans on her journey from Nisei Week Queen to TV weather forecasting.

Photos by MARIO G. REYES/Rafu Shimpo
3 p.m. — Evans inputs the weeklong forecast information into the computer.

4:15 p.m. — Makeup artist Steffi Berens applies
eyeshadow ahead of the broadcast.

5 p.m. — A camera films Evans doing the weather forecast in front of a green screen.

Evans is crowned the 1994 Nisei
Week Queen.

“Ten seconds,” a voice calls out. In the chilly news studio of KCBS Channel 2, weekend anchors Sharon Tay and Juan Fernandez sit ready to present the 5 o’clock news. They’re the veterans, familiar faces in local news. Over at the weather desk is a personality who may be new to most of Los Angeles, but not to the Japanese American community.

Kimi Evans, a former Nisei Week Queen, is one of the newest faces at CBS2 and sister station KCAL9. She started doing the weather at the TV stations in November after stints in San Diego and Honolulu.

Evans currently fills in when the regular weather anchors are on vacation. Over the Thanksgiving weekend she worked numerous shifts filling in at both CBS2 and KCAL9.

“I work whatever shift they need to me to do. This week I do the morning shift twice, so I have to be there at three in the morning, then on Saturday and Sunday I do the night shift.”

“It’s been a whirlwind. I feel really blessed,” said Evans. “I don’t know how long it will last but I’m enjoying the ride. It’s a really great company and everyone has been so nice to me.”

Evans’ journey from Nisei Week to the news is an unlikely one. Before this, she was earning a high income as a pharmaceutical representative, her career path seemingly set.

Yet even during her reign as Nisei Week Queen, Evans had thought about a career in television journalism. She was crowned in 1994, representing the West L.A. JACL/Auxiliary and Venice Japanese Community Center.

“Nisei Week is what prepared me for something like this. I don’t think people realize how much public speaking and traveling we do,” she said.
With the encouragement of friends, she went to the Asian American Journalists Association convention last year.

“I really owe so much to AAJA. All the people through the AAJA really supported me and helped me put my tape together, and critiqued me, I feel really indebted to them,” said Evans.

Raised by her mom, Nobuko Tokuda, Evans cleared it with her, since the big pay cut would affect them both.

“I said mom, I feel like I’m suffocating in the career that I’m in. I may not be able to help you out as much financially, and she was really supportive.”

During a vacation last year in Hawaii, Evans took her audition tape around to the local news stations.

Expecting to receive just critiques, she ended up getting job offers from three of Hawaii’s four stations, eventually deciding upon KHON-TV, the Fox affiliate in Honolulu.

Unfortunately, her position was eliminated when the station had a round of budget cuts, but she looks back at the experience as overwhelmingly positive.

“I left with a great letter of recommendation, that the ratings went up when I was there,” said Evans.

After an extended vacation in Asia, Evans got a job doing fill-in weather in San Diego. In September, the news director at KCBS/KCAL offered her a job with their news team.

“I was filling in within a week. In the first week I trained and learned the new computer system and when I had some downtime I went to Hawaii and I just got back from moving from Hawaii,” she said.

In the darkened newsroom in Studio City, Evans works intently at a bank of monitors, updating the weather forecasts for the 5 p.m. evening news. The newsroom is quiet except for the sound of a police radio. As the weather anchor, it is her job to make the forecasts for the week’s weather, pulling from a number of news sources.

“My very first forecast (in Hawaii) when I said it was 40 percent chance of rain. And it poured and poured on all the (Honolulu) Marathon runners. That’s great, nice way to start my career,” she quipped.

Evans, who is currently working on a degree in broadcast meteorology from Mississippi State University, said it has been challenging getting used to the L.A. weather scene.

“There are so many cities to talk about. In Hawaii, you focus on one island at a time, but here you talk about so many different cities,” Evans said. “There are all these microclimates and big differences between the valleys and the beaches. It keeps it interesting for me.”

After finishing her weather reports — different versions for CBS2 and KCAL— Evans heads to make-up and hair. In the makeup room, she chats with Tay and Fernandez who also get ready for the evening’s broadcast.
In the news studio, Evans stands in front of a green screen and gestures to areas where the computer graphics are added to show the latest latest temperatures or weather systems.

All of the segments are timed to the second, but she noted that they also have to be able to think on their feet.

“In the news, they’ll either stretch or shorten it. Sometimes they might say, you have a minute and a half, so you have to condense. Other times it’ll be three minutes or four minutes,” she said.

For December, Evans will be working between 10 to 15 days. As the self-described “low man on the totem pole” she said she’s not sure what will happen next, but that’s she’s grateful and excited for the opportunity.

“I didn’t want to look back and regret, if I tried and failed, then at least I tried. But if I never tried, I’d have to live with that for the rest of my life,” she said. “I have no regrets. I love doing the weather, it’s just a passion for me. If it was to end tomorrow, at least I could say I tried, I did it.”