Robert “Bob” Lazich, whose broadcasting career spanned more than fifty years — thirty at KNBC/KNBR — arrived in San Francisco in 1965 and immediately started as a news writer. The station gave him on-air time after a couple of months and things took off from there.
Lazich started his radio career at age 17 in his native Butte, MT. His radio career would include stops in Missoula, MT and Fargo, ND. Among his adventures in newsgathering was a 1959 incident in which the car in which he was hurrying to cover a chain-reaction crash in a North Dakota dust storm crashed into the other vehicles. “Laz” escaped without injuries.
A versatile newsman, Lazich covered the Angela Davis trial in San Jose, the Patty Hearst arraignment, was called out of church to cover the Oakland Hills fire, kept tabs on the Zebra Killer and covered three executions. He also did two NBC network nightly newscasts for seven years before the network moved all operations to New York City.