Yesterday afternoon I filmed a law enforcement search of a home that may or may not be connected to the disappearance of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu. The first 45 minutes were rather mundane, if not downright boring. The trailer park where the home is located is private property, and the police kept the media on a sidewalk about a block and a half away from the search site.

As a result, I had to spend most of the first hour with my small SD camera at full zoom and focused on a three-foot-wide gap between the law enforcement search truck and a tree that was at least 300 feet away. Occasionally, someone official looking would shuffle between the tree and truck.

Needless to say, it was stimulating. I’m pretty sure I have a bit of sunburn now.

But the afternoon did give me an introduction to the media circus that is the Cantu disappearance. Every English- and Spanish-language television station from Sacramento to the Bay Area was on the scene. CNN showed up late.

We were all crowded onto the same corner outside the trailer park looking at the same shot. I snapped a quick photo of the scene with my camera phone.

At least one news station had a helicopter over the trailer park. It led to a somewhat-harried exchange between two reporters trying to explain the location of the search site to their producer:

Reporter A: “Tell him to use Google Earth!”

Reporter B: “I did! He only has roof view, not street view!”

There were at least 15 camera operators and reporters at the scene. Most of them were hungry for whatever fresh information they could find. They stopped every passerby – families with strollers, a woman with a shopping cart – and asked if they knew the resident of the home that was searched (referred to in the rest of this blog as the person-of-interest.)

When a trailer park resident approached the media, reporters, myself included, crowded around him to dutifully record his comments.

Of course, nothing he said could be confirmed, even the name he gave for the person-of-interest. (A name we soon found to be incorrect.) It quickly became clear that the interview subject was just looking for his 15 minutes of fame. He repeatedly said the person-of-interest was “shady.” When asked what that meant, he said, “you know, shady.” As further description, the interview subject said the person-of-interest was “an asshole. Whoops, I shouldn’t have said that on TV. (Chuckle.)”

Still, we all had to record what he said, just in case he actually was correct about the person-of-interest. And frankly, I felt a little bad for the guy. He was just an average shmoe looking to get in front of a camera. There was nothing else going on; the alternative to recording the guy was to go back to my shot of the three-foot-wide hole in front of the search site. So why not.

Thankfully, one of the Bay Area news stations was there to cover for me and keep the flame alive for journalism. Their reporter hammered at the guy like he was a Congressman caught reaching under the stall of a men’s room. “How do you know it’s him? Describe him! How did he walk? Did he have a beard?” the reporter hounded, frequently cutting off the interview subject. When the subject was embarrased and shown to be sufficently clueless, the reporter finally turned away and made a disgusted comment about how the guy was wrong.

Another victory in journalism’s war against regular people!

After that modicum of excitement, it was back to my hole. When I felt adventerous, I’d turn the camera away to get some b-roll: A missing poster on a fire hydrant, or a neighborhood watch sign on a fence.

The television crews, meanwhile, prepared to shoot their live spots for their 5 o’clock newscasts. The transmitters on their trucks made for a striking image against the blue sky:

Television news trucks in a hotel parking lot in Tracy, California, April 3.

About 90 minutes after I arrived – and with my camera battery half-empty and only 20 minutes left of tape – I noticed police shutting down the street outside the trailer park. Finally, action. I joined the media horde in quickly descending on the cops as they set up a checkpoint and interviewed the drivers and passengers of every car passing by.

When I had just two minutes of tape left, my photographer pointed out that a passenger in a stopped car was the father of the missing girl, who we had yet to interview. I set my camera in his open car window as one of the Spanish-language reporters asked him questions.

My hours on the scene came down to that one-minute exchange. You can find the final video by clicking on the button below.