Tim served in the US Marine Corps with MWSG-37 in the 3rd Marine Air Wing at El Toro, then spent the rest of his life as a reporter covering thousands of issues, worked as co-producer for a 30-minute documentary "Fallen Fortress at Cape Lookout" which aired on Oregon Public Broadcasting in 1993.
Also significant among his achievements are the 2 years he spent as a Wildlife Rescue team leader on the coast of Oregon.
Tim had more than thirty years of experience on the West Coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, and reporter. His career in the broadcast industry afforded him many opportunities to cover incredible stories as well as meet innumerable celebrities and dignitaries.
He flew in many military planes including an F-16 Air Force Fighter, and produced a three-part series on aviation history of the Southwest region of the United States. Aviation was one of Tim's passions.
I met Tim back in 2007, not long after my father passed due to chemical exposure. We communicated mostly via E-Mail and telephone and we finally met in person with a small band of people to produce a documentary on military base contamination.
We filmed interviews with several people, and each had a story to tell which had all been captured on video.
We then took many soil samples from various locations on the former MCAS El Toro Marine Base which had been sold to a land developer. Those samples were all obtained from not even digging 2” down and each sample was placed in a paper cup and a lit put on them.
The samples gathered were then sent to a biologist/chemist who ran numerous tests on each of the samples only to report back to us that there were many chemicals involved and all were 100-200% higher than EPA acceptable standards proving that MCAS El Toro was the worst contaminated base in the military history.
Sadly, all our work to that point were wasted when the person who was backing our endeavor decided to speak directly to the land developer opening up pandora’s box, ending up in court and the judge ordered that all information, materials and video tape be destroyed.
Another huge aspect of Tim's work revolved around the contamination of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine, California, which officials planned to turn into a park and housing subdivision, in spite of the fact that the ground is contaminated with multiple deadly chemicals.
Working with several Salem-News.com writers who also served as Marines at El Toro, Tim generated a steady stream of news reports that impacted the proposed redevelopment of the base. He and Robert O'Dowd co-authored a book on the subject called “Betrayal”.
Tim was an outgoing, kind, hard working man, always doing his level best to never let anyone down.
Tim and Bonnie launched Salem-News.com during the summer of 2004 while he was working as a photojournalist/reporter for KATU Channel-2 News, in Portland, Oregon.
Tim covered the war in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007 and from the Iraq war in 2008. He witnessed various operations out of Kabul, visiting the former training camp of Usama bin Laden in Jalabad, Mazur-e-Shariff, where the US war there began, and many other locations, turning 30 news reports for Salem-News.com and Oregon's FOX-12.
A year later, Tim spent five weeks covering the war in Iraq, embedded once again with an Oregon Guard unit.
Tim produced reports with the Army's 101st Airborne and Marines in Iraq's Anbar province, during the summer of 2008, based primarily out of the Air base at Balad, better known to soldiers there as "Mortaritaville" due to its frequent reception of rocket and missile attacks.
This is where Tim learned the unique phrase popular in Iraq at the time: “Did you create a terrorist today?"
Our hearts and prayers go out to his wife Bonnie, and his entire family!
Please visit the following sites for more information:
Obituary: http://salem-news.com/articles/october132020/tim_king_obituary-bk.php
SEE ALSO: Tim King in Critical Condition After Motorcycle Crash [Oct 4 2020]
GoFundMe: Tim King Memorial Fund
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