By Pete Borello

Los Altos High grad Mathai anchors NBC3’s sports desk

Raj Mathai has come a long way since The Gum Incident.

He can now look back and laugh at what happened that night in Yuma, Ariz., where he was making his debut as a professional television broadcaster.

Just moments before his inaugural sports report on the KYMA evening news, Mathai realized he had a wad of gum in his mouth. Bright green gum.

The thought of swallowing it didn’t even enter his mind, nervous as he was. So, with the camera trained on him and the on-air light in the studio going amber, Mathai did the first thing that did come to mind. He turned his head to the left and spit out the green gob.

“I thought it was my first and last night on TV,” said Mathai, a 1989 graduate of Los Altos High School.

While Mathai took plenty of ribbing from co-workers for hurling his gum like a major league ballplayer for all of Yuma to see, the station’s news director stuck with him.

After all, Mathai did go on with the show, dutifully reading his report as the news anchors doubled over in laughter.

Before long, Mathai proved he was no joke and steadily worked his way up the TV market ladder. After two years in Yuma - ranked 176th out of the nation’s 210 markets - he moved to another NBC affiliate in Fresno, market No. 55. A year and a half later, he landed at KNTV (Channel 11) in San Jose.

When Mathai first arrived at KNTV in late 1998, the station was an ABC affiliate for a medium-size market made up of the South Bay, Monterey and Salinas. But it morphed into NBC’s Bay Area affiliate at the beginning of this year - changing its name to NBC3 - when the network severed ties with San Francisco’s KRON.

Suddenly, Mathai was the sports director of a station serving the fifth-largest market in the country.

“It’s worked out well,” the 31-year-old said, “especially being able to work in my home market.”

Mathai is a great example of “a local boy done good,” said Blake Martell, who’s been one of Mathai’s best friends since high school.

“He’s fought his way up and paid his dues,” Martell said. “Raj’s goal has always been to work in a top-10 market, and he’s made it.”

Although he’s had opportunities to take his talents to a national stage, Mathai seems quite content where he is.

“I’d like to stay here awhile - it’s my home - and I hope to become a bigger presence,” said Mathai, who recently bought a home in San Carlos. “I’ll stay until they kick me out.”

As long as NBC3 continues to draw big Nielsen numbers for its newscasts and Mathai keeps collecting Emmys, there shouldn’t be any danger of that happening.

Mathai last month picked up his second Northern California Area Emmy Award, winning for Outstanding Sports Program for a special he did at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

“That was a great feeling,” said Mathai, who also won a regional Emmy for Outstanding Sports Segment in 1998.

Mathai covered the Olympics from beginning to end - working 35 straight days - and one gets the feeling he loved every minute of it.

Covering sports “is not a job,” Mathai said. “I’ve never said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go to work today.’ I want to go because it’s fun.”

What makes it so fun?

“Every day is different, and you never know what’s going to happen next,” Mathai said. “The great thing about TV news is that it changes so quickly and so many things are going on. And it’s live - it gets your blood going.”

It’s a job that seems to be in Mathai’s blood, as he comes from a family of sports fanatics and journalists.

Soon after his family moved to Los Altos from India in 1977, a young Mathai realized what he wanted to do when he grew up.

“I was watching Monday Night Football,” he said, “and I saw how much fun (the announcers) were having. It didn’t seem like a job.”

At Los Altos High, Mathai played three sports (baseball, water polo and badminton) and got involved in student government (class treasurer), but his true passion was writing for the school newspaper.

“I spent a lot of time at The Talon,” said Mathai, who was a sportswriter and feature columnist. “It taught me a lot.”

Mathai learned even more at San Diego State University, earning degrees in journalism and political science and turning an internship with the NFL’s San Diego Chargers into a full-time position. Mathai spent five years in the Chargers’ public relations department, “learning the business from the team side of things.”

Mathai still had an itch to switch to the media side, though, and interned at a San Diego TV station. That’s where he made his first audition tape.

“I sent it to 47 stations all over the country,” he said. “Eight months later, the 47th one said, ‘Yes.’”

Off to Yuma he went, becoming the first Indian sports director at a network affiliate.

“I was making $18,000 a year and I loved it,” Mathai said. “Money’s not the factor with me.”

Of course, moving to bigger markets has meant bigger paychecks for Mathai, who has two years left on a lucrative contract with NBC3.

There are drawbacks to talking sports for a living, however.

“The toughest things are the schedule and the instability of the profession,” he said. “You work nights and you’re always on call. And TV news is a very vulnerable profession.”

Mathai does two shows nightly - NBC3 has news at 6 and 11 - five days a week and hosts the “Sports Sunday” program.

His typical workday starts at 2 or 3 p.m., when he “meets with the producers, finds out where the (camera) crews are and finds out what’s going on in sports.” Mathai and the producers then “stack the show,” setting the lineup of stories for his four-minute report on the 6 p.m. news. An hour before air time he writes his scripts, then sits down for makeup - a ritual Mathai and most of his sports anchor brethren like about as much as a trip to the oral surgeon.

When the show ends at 7, “we throw it out and start all over,” Mathai said. “It’s a different beast at 11 because we’re recapping events from the day.”

And he has just 2 minutes and 45 seconds to do it.

“I’d like more time at 11,” Mathai said, “but it’s that age-old battle between having more news or more sports.”

Time may not be on his side, but Mathai always makes the most of it, according to NBC3 newscast director Ferdinand Furer, who calls Mathai “a perfectionist.”

Furer said it’s not hard to see why Mathai has come so far so fast.

“He works hard, has a lot of charisma and he’s a people person,” said Furer, who’s been at the station since 1994. “Raj knows what people want and he has a great personality. He’s so down to earth.”

Away from the high-strung world of TV news, Mathai likes to “wind down and just relax” by reading a book, cooking or going out to dinner. He also might go for a run or play basketball with his buddies.

In addition, Mathai finds time for charitable events - particularly fund-raisers for leukemia research - and school visits.

“I love to go to classrooms and speak with kids,” said Mathai, who spoke at Los Altos High two years ago.

Mathai enjoys tackling questions from students and has his share of words of wisdom after seven years in the news business.

Like how to keep your gum to yourself during a broadcast.

“Now, if that happens,” he said, “I always put it deep into my gums.”