ABC7 news reporter Veronica Miracle’s father saw his daughter on TV for the first time in Feb. after spending 13 years in federal prison for wire fraud and tax evasion.
“It was everything you expected to be; emotional, exciting but there’s also feelings of anxiety and watching him re-enter society is really strange. Being able to witness his transition and being there and watching him you know try on like regular clothing for the first time in over a decade, it was healing,” Miracle said.
Even though it was a healing situation, Miracle began to experience the same feelings she felt when her father first left while watching him get accustomed to life outside of prison.
“It also triggered some memories of some feelings that I felt when it first happened like shame and embarrassment and anxiety. It’s a process dealing with all of these varying emotions,” Miracle said.
Regardless of his incarceration, Miracle and her father always had a good relationship and while he was in prison, Miracle would visit him on some occasions and stayed in communication with him while he was there.
During the time Miracle was living without her father, she went from being a reporter in a small city in Idaho, to joining the news team at ABC7.
In 2015, the L.A Times reported that ABC7 had the highest viewership in the L.A. market for the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts.
“I’ve been in this business for seven years now. So to go through all those milestones of being on TV for your first time, moving to your second market, getting to L.A., all of those thing I had to do on my own,” Miracle said.
Miracle kept the story of her father private until earlier this year when she announced his release on her Twitter account.
Upon sharing, she received support from those who related to her story.
Soon after the Twitter post, she received a phone call from Long Beach City College to be the commencement speaker for the upcoming 2019 graduation.
Associate Director of Public Relations and Marketing Stacey Toda, expressed that LBCC chose Miracle to be the commencement speaker because she is different from the usual keynote speakers the college invites.
“We have had a lot of men speak at our ceremony the last couple of years you know. She’s a woman. We haven’t had one in I think in five years. Just to hear from a different perspective of what she has been through would be really cool, ” Toda said.
“She’s also someone students can relate to. She made it openly known that her dad was incarcerated. She was born in Japan, she was an immigrant, a first generation student. ”
With this being her first time speaking at a commencement ceremony, Miracle shared how she felt to be a part of the big day.
“Its really really really humbling … to get the call from LBCC like ‘we want you to talk about that and other things to our students,’ it made me feel better about opening up and being so vulnerable,” Miracle said.
“But I don’t remember my commencement speaker for my bachelors, so hopefully I can be a bit more memorable.”
The general assignment reporter attended Washington State University, where she received her undergraduate degree while studying broadcast journalism and political science.
“I liked writing and it kind of came easier to me than other stuff. It feels good to be able to do something that you are kind of good at and I was like ‘yeah I kinda wanna go into broadcasting’ and then that whole thing happened with my dad … So it was like, I can go one of two ways, I can say I never want anything to do with this again, I don’t wanna be involved with journalism or I can be somebody who can help provoke change,” Miracle said.
During her father’s incarceration, she met professor Marvin Marcelo at WSU who she credits in rebuilding her confidence and inspiring her to pursue her career goals.
“Veronica is a once in a decade student,” Marcelo said. “She has so much determination and so much desire for her career and future.”
For Marcelo, one thing that stood out to him about Miracle was how well she took criticism and how she grew from it.
At WSU, Miracle decided to study abroad in India for a year which she found to be an eye-opening experience.
A memorable moment in India for Miracle was when she was riding the bus and saw a man on the road with no limbs, begging for food.
“I came back really depressed for a few months because of what you see out there and the disparity and the injustice that happens every day,” Miracle said.
After her experiences in India and WSU, Miracle began her broadcasting career at KLEW-TV in Lewiston, Idaho, where she was an evening news anchor and a general assignment reporter.
The low-paying job included extra long hours which were unforgiving to her personal life.
“One Christmas Eve, I was one of just a couple reporters who came in. And that morning, I reported and shot some stories and then I had to produce and anchor the newscast,” Miracle said.
“I think I messed one thing up and someone told me about it and then I went to the back and just started sobbing.”
Miracle’s hard work paid off when she moved to Fresno to work as a general assignment reporter for ABC30.
While in Fresno, Miracle came upon a story that would change her life.
Her reporting on a story about Melissa Neylon, a woman falsely accused of crimes she did not commit, helped release Neylon from jail.
“Getting all the paperwork from her husband who was so exasperated, and who had hired a private detective but wasn’t able to get anywhere. He was just so desperate to get his wife home. When I started going through all the documentation he had given me, I was like ‘there was no way she could have committed any these crimes,’ Miracle said.
During her free time she examined the paperwork.
After presenting it to the prosecutors, Miracle showed them the factors that did not align with the case they had against this woman.
“It was like this moment that I realized, ‘Oh my goodness, I have a power to do something. I can use the keyboard to change somebody’s life and to help somebody’ and I never really realized that,” Miracle said.
“You get this responsibility and when you realize you can use it for good it’s such an empowering feeling.”
After her time in Fresno, Miracle made the move to work as a general assignment reporter for ABC7.
With ABC7, Miracle has covered a range of topics including the California wildfires and the Thousand Oaks shooting at Borderline Bar & Grill late last year.
Miracle expressed that dealing with mental health should be a bigger topic in the news community.
“Journalists see a lot of stuff and I don’t think that we realize how much it affects us cause we are not firefighters or police officers carrying the dead bodies like holding these family members and telling them like your son is dead,” Miracle said.
“We are not those people and so I think because of that we are like ‘yea we aren’t doing the tough work,’ but there is still PTSD that can happen. It’s a lot harder to be a journalist, you are under more pressure to do more and also to be perfect.”
Miracle is also the co-founder of a news app that she hopes to launch in the near future.
“It’s something that I thought about in Fresno with my co-founder. People our age don’t really care about watching television. People our age are not tuning into news broadcast. I love the news industry so much and I don’t wanna see it die,” Miracle said.
Miracle envisions herself continuing being a reporter at ABC7 in the near future as she continues to expand on her relationship with her dad.