Working alongside his wife, Nerissa, as news co-anchors for KCOY-TV, Drew Sugars' friendly, mellifluous voice and handsome face have greeted viewers locally most evenings for the past nine years.

But his audience will soon shrink from tens of thousands to several hundred.

He's leaving the Santa Maria station next week to start work as a public information specialist for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department. Instead of the adrenaline rush, long hours and unyielding deadlines of broadcast news, he'll be working four days a week producing employee training videos and a monthly video on Sheriff's Department activities.

His focus will be on helping keep hundreds of employees better informed about what's going on within that multi-faceted agency, including any new equipment and programs.

“I won't be the guy out there on the crime scene,” said Sugars, whose last day at KCOY will be Wednesday. “I will be doing more in-house stuff, the goal being to keep 700-plus employees better connected so they feel like they're all part of the same team.”

His wife of nearly 15 years, Nerissa Sugars, will remain in her anchor slot at KCOY. It will be first time since early in their marriage that the couple hasn't worked together. Before coming to Santa Maria nine years ago, they were co-anchors for television stations in Bakersfield and Erie, Pa.

“It's kind of sad that we're not going to be working together anymore because we're so used to that,” Drew Sugars said. “At the same time, it's going to be great.”

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The new job “is kind of scary and totally different than anything I've done” before, he confided, “but I will be using skills I've picked up” during 17 years of working in television. “It was time to do something different. I need to challenge myself and see if I can do this.”

Although he'll be taking a pay cut to make the job change, it may mean more financial security. KCOY-TV is currently for sale, Sugars said, and he and his wife were approaching the end of a four-year contract that hasn't been renewed.

“They have not talked to us about a new contract,” he said. “When you have both people whose incomes are coming from the same source,” and there's that kind of uncertainty, “it really kicked me (into realizing) one of us needs to be in a different situation.”

Helping produce training videos is an important part of the new job, but so is putting together a monthly video of Sheriff's Department highlights that is “basically like a TV show” for employees. Eventually, he hopes that can be expanded to include items of interest to the community at large.

“My goal is to make that internal video become external,” he said, “to try and make the public feel even more connected to the Sheriff's Department.”

For example, “I might do a story wrapping up all the big cases the department handled for that month.”

Although he's covered law enforcement throughout his television career, Sugars said he never imagined working in that arena. When he appeared before a five-person interview panel for the Sheriff's Department job, “I felt like I was in front of a parole board,” he recalled, “and really left there thinking this job's not for me.”

He changed his mind after a subsequent, one-on-one meeting with Sheriff Bill Brown. “I was very impressed,” Sugars said. “He was a thinker, and seemed to really believe everything he was saying.”

Because he lives in Orcutt but now will be commuting to work at the sheriff's headquarters near Goleta, Sugars arranged to work four 10-hour days a week. That will mean less driving and give him more time with his three children, ages 6 to 11.

“I feel like I'm going from barely seeing my kids during the week to having three days in a row with them each week,” he said with a note of glee.

His biggest regret in leaving the station, he added, “is that I really like this community. This (television news) job is really a public trust, and I just hope whoever takes my place will also feel that way.”

Sheriff Brown said he chose Sugars to be the department's public information specialist because he presented himself extremely well during the interview process. “In addition to being an accomplished newscaster, he has a solid background in filmmaking,” the sheriff added. “We're looking forward to him joining our department.”

Sugars, 43, graduated from San Francisco State - where he met Nerissa - with a bachelor's degree in radio and television broadcasting.

Chuck Schultz can be reached at 925-2691, Ext. 2241, or cschultz@santamariatimes.com.

February 24, 2008