Their Turn: Getting to Know Our RPVtv Celebrities By Contributor and Writer Deborah Paul
Their Turn: Getting to Know Our RPVtv Celebrities By Contriubtor and Writer Deborah Paul
Tucked away on probably some of the loneliest and most expensive real estate on the Palos Verdes Peninsula is a small edifice some might see as a roughly constructed wickiup. The ocean and RPV city hall dog park is a pebble’s throw away while the nearby Point Vicente Lighthouse stands sentient over the rustic coastal landscape.
Inside the former World War II facility resides three of the most productive part-time workers connected with the Rancho Palos Verdes City Hall you could stumble across. Liz Brown Swanson, Maria Serrao and Carlos Rivera — all Cox Communications transplants — run the local RPVtv educational access channel provided to Rancho Palos Verdes community on Cox Cable channel 33, the Frontier Fiberoptic Channel 38 and on YouTube. The RPVtv team works directly under the supervision of the deputy city manager Karina Bañales who oversees content and production.
The trio airs such programs as the “Around the Peninsula” that reports on everything from park projects to events like “Whale of a Day. “City Talk” covers political issues, interviews with local government members or presents educational information to residents on how to get permits or register for a public service announcement. The RPVtv co-workers give accolades to Cox for helping them further their collective skills in the world of community television. “Cox gave us so much freedom to learn our trade,” Maria Serrao said about the transition to RPVtv. “Here we are on the outskirts of LA, but actually get to do big stories.”
Serrao is a front-of-the-camera reporter and independent contractor who has been with RPVtv since 2005. She has also been a sports reporter for 20 years and airs her own show, “Playing the Field” on channel 33.
The City has two part-time RPVtv employees: Carlos Rivera and Liz Brown Swanson — and two independent contractors, Maria Serrao and Jeff Koven. Covered here are Liz Brown Swanson, Maria Serrao and Carlos Rivera — all Cox Communications transplants — run the local RPVtv educational access channel provided to Rancho Palos Verdes community on Cox Cable channel 33, the Frontier Fiberoptic Channel 38 and on YouTube.
She not only covers RPV high schools, colleges and other community events, she produces stories with the Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, Clippers, Sparks, Kings, NFL and Indy Car. Blonde and stylish Serrao has the kind of deep blue eyes cameras around the world love to zero in on. The one-time Miss California beauty pageant contender has a way that makes her subjects feel at ease enough to offer up penetrating stories. The evidence is her five Telly Awards she has accumulated during her career.
A Telly Award honors excellence in video and television across all screens. Judges are comprised of the Telly Award Judging Council, a group of leading video and television experts from some of the most prestigious companies in entertainment, publishing, advertising, and emerging technology, including Warner Media, NBC News, Framestore NY, and Vimeo to name a few. Serrao said the prestigious awards are a big deal for small town RPVtv and mean a lot to her and her team.
Serrao, who interviews professional athletes at the highest sporting levels in television, has never let the fact her life involves a wheelchair get in the way of her dreams and aspirations. She was in a car accident at age five, but has never had the mindset that she is disabled.
The fact that she is probably the only news reporter in the nation who uses a wheelchair doesn’t deter her one bit.
Considered a groundbreaker, she still doesn’t want to carry a banner that will make people feel sorry for her. She said the networks need to understand, 25 percent of the population of the U.S. have injuries or disability, but less than three percent are on television.
“I believe in giving people a chance with disabilities,” she says to those employers with preconceived ideas about hiring someone in a wheelchair. “It’s not like I’ve ever tried to get a job as a firefighter. The reason professional athletes I interview don’t see me as different is because they also have challenges in their lives.”
Among her many career accomplishments throughout the years, Serrao was recently honored in October 2022 by the City of Los Angeles County Supervisors Office for her work in television as America’s only female sports reporter covering major sports from a wheelchair.
She traveled the country as a spokesperson for CYBEX fitness equipment and has enjoyed numerous appearances on shows such as “Good Morning America”, “Entertainment Tonight” and guest starred on “21 Jump Street” and “Prison Break.” She said she has interviewed Donald Trump twice. The first time was when he was making up with the city about the oversized flagpole. The second time was about golf. “He couldn’t have been nicer, Serrao said. “I was shocked. He was just a really down to earth person.”
Petite and stylish, one of Serrao’s favorite outside activities away from cameras and microphones is shopping as evidenced by the designer belts, boots, shoes and jeans she dons even on casual days. Carlos Rivera who works all the technical magic behind the cameras for RPVtv said he thinks Serrao is tougher than just about anybody he knows. “She is not disabled,” he said and laughed, impressed she has her own special press box at the Super Bowl and has easy access to some of the most famous locker rooms in sports.
Rivera, a five-year employee for RPVtv is also a Cox Cable transport who has worn many hats.
As a young man, he served a 4-year stint in the United States Airforce as a jet engine mechanic. He was a cartoonist for his West Los Angeles College newspaper, worked in aerospace, earned a degree in management from USF (University of San Francisco), became a buyer and seller at Northrop where he also worked on the YF23/B2bomber aircraft.
Rivera said he eventually took TV and film classes at UCLA Extension. He cut his teeth covering city council meetings for the city of Santa Monica.
“Two old guys would come to the meetings,” Rivera said about his impressionable learning days. “One of the old guys had what he called his ‘commie’ hat. As the Pledge of Allegiance was recited the two old guys would end it with their own twist: “… and justice for all … except in Santa Monica.”
On any given day, TV producer Rivera might call himself a chief, cook and bottle washer.
The motto he lives behind is: “Be kind to everyone.”
In Rivera’s case, he said he starts his RPVtv day vacuuming the whole place down with a powerful Shop Vac. He likes the shop, shipshape and clean. A survey of the room with its miles of wires, programming equipment, cameras, green screens and lighting might look disorderly to the unpracticed eye, but to Rivera, everything is in the right place.
“I once forgot to pack a tripod for a big sports event,” Rivera said, as he pointed to where back-up wires, batteries, lights and camera equipment are stashed around the Fort Knox-like shop. “You only forget once, and never again. Simply going to a football game isn’t simply going to a football game.”
Other aspects of the job include paperwork, setting up cameras, organizing a shoot, editing programing, more paperwork, emailing, communicating with the main city hall building and being prepared for drastic changes in scheduling or projects.
“We are so grateful Carlos came out of retirement,” Brown Swanson said of her co-worker. “Working with Carlos and Maria have brought unique skills sets to RPVtv.”
Breaking news is rare Rivera said, but every once in a while something like the 18th hole at Trump’s slides into the ocean, there’s a brush fire or sadly, a body is found at the bottom of RPV cliffs. So, the team has to be fluid and organized.
Recently, Carlos and the production team went live to RPV’s sister city in Sakura City, Japan,. They covered a two-hour show with speakers and dancers.
“Without the expertise of Carlos, that would never have happened,” Serrao said.
In his spare time, Rivera said he dabbles as an artist as “sort of a mission” at his church where he said he produces “Worship Art.” As the music plays during the service he recreates the theme in pastel chalk, then usually gives away the picture at the end of the service.
He said he also loves to recreate Disney characters for fun and relaxation.
The third vivacious, inquisitive and dedicated team member is Liz Brown Swanson, another Cox transplant who helped launch RPVtv pilot program as news director in 2005.
Subsequently, Brown Swanson recruited Serrao and Rivera to round out the RPVtv team that has stuck together one way or another for decades.
Swanson also has an eclectic background which includes a degree in journalism from Emerson College in Boston, MA. She was an anchor reporter at age 23 for a Eureka NBC affiliate.
Later, she covered politics for an ABC affiliate in New Hampshire , then moved back with her husband and young kids back to the California sunshine.
For a short time, she took upon the task of media relations for her mother-in-law, Gordana Swanson who was running for a LA County Supervisor office. She trained kids at the Southern California Regional Occupational Center (SCROC) how to work in TV, worked for Century Cable in Santa Monica and finally landed with the city of Rancho Palos Verdes where she has worked part time for the last 16 years.
“I felt so grateful when I got hired,” Swanson said. “The city and staff have allowed me to be an objective reporter, so I can continue using skills I love.”
Swanson said she never wanted to be an ambulance chaser, because people love human interest stories. She covers city council meetings and other community affairs scheduled or not.
“And there are so many community stories,” she added. “We do stories that make a difference.”
Swanson has her own monthly show called “RPV City Talk” where she interviews the mayor or other city council members table-side at the Terranea Resort.
Most recently she did a piece on restoring the rare Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly as RPV naturalists release them into nearby reserves.
Further, she won a Beacon Award for Excellence for a poignant story she produced on bullying that involved a local teenage suicide. She managed to get the bully on camera for a 30-minute, heart-wrenching interview while focusing on coping skills as the main context of the piece.
One of the unique aspects of Swanson is she is bi-coastal.
For a few months out of the year, she has arranged to go back to her roots in Boston where her and her sisters own a trendy boutique shop, “4 BEACH” in Manchester-by-the-Sea that sells everything from jewelry, purses and clothes to newspapers, ice buckets and cookbooks.
She said she learned her retail skills from the folks at the RPV city-run gift shop at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center. She was able to tap in on certain vendors and resource outlets that serve her just as well on the east coast.
But her home and heart are on the Palos Verdes Peninsula where she has been married to her husband Don for 34 years and raised three sons in the process of all her career building.
The three energetic newsmakers probably have the most interesting jobs on The Hill, but all agree with Swanson that RPVtv is definitely “a gift to the community.”
If you would like to contact RPVtv or have a public service announcement aired, call: (310) 544-5392 or email RPVtv@pv.com
Deborah Paul has played with ink since she was able to read and write. At 19, after two years of college, she left St. Louis to fly for American Airlines, and later enjoyed a long career with Flying Tiger Lines in many capacities, including flying military and their dependents all over the world as a flight attendant. Paul returned to university in the 1990s earning a journalism degree from Cal State University Dominguez Hills and was eventually hired as a newspaper reporter for the South Bay Weekly section of the Los Angeles Times. A decade later she worked for Orange Coast Magazine as their Charitable Events editor. She also taught journalism and was advisor to the campus newspaper at CSUDH and still contributes as a regular stringer for Peninsula News on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Currently, she has published five children’s books and most recently a zany cookbook featuring recipes from her former Flying Tiger Flight Attendant partners. Her poetic fictional stories are inspired by real people who have left an indelible mark on the quiet display of simple human kindness. She resides in Rancho Palos Verdes married to Jim, her husband of many adventures.
