Longtime KGET News Director John Pilios is getting out while the getting is good.

After 14 years at the station, Pilios retires from the station Today.

Before coming to Bakersfield in 1999, Pilios was news director at KCOY TV in Santa Maria, the city where he broke into broadcasting as a radio disc jockey in 1977.

When he came out of the Navy in 1970, John Pilios kicked around for a while, trying to find the right job. 

"I did a lot of jobs that you could say I wasn't very good at. But I'd always wanted to be in broadcasting", Pilios said.

His dream was to be a baseball play-by-play announcer. Vin Scully was his idol.

But, his wife Cindy was not dialed in on John's dream.

"I always felt a little guilty about it. I wouldn't let him do it...dragging our daughter around the states doing what I thought was a stupid thing," she said.

So, John and wife Cindy and baby daughter Dawn established roots in Santa Maria.

"Being a compassionate journalist and a pursuer of the truth and the two things can coexist easily, and that's what I've tried to impart on the people I've worked with," Pilios said.

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