Mirthala Salinas

LIFE FOR MIRTHALA SALINAS began in Mexico. She was born in Tijuana and grew up in Hermosillo. Her father was a radio announcer who later opened a furniture business. His cousin, whom he promoted for a time, was the comedian and famed Norteño pioneer Eulalio “El Piporro” Gonzalez. From them she learned about broadcasting. It sealed her future. “I didn’t want to be a model, or whatever,” she says. “I wanted to do the news.”

Her parents divorced when she was 13. Four years later, she moved with her mother and younger brother to Tolleson, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, where an older sister lived. At 18, awaiting a work permit, Salinas knocked on doors at Spanish-language radio stations until one let her hang around. When her permit arrived, the station gave her a job. At 21, she moved to television and took a part-time reporter position in Phoenix. “I had a boyfriend,” she says. They talked about marriage. Indeed, the young man went to Hermosillo and asked her father for her hand. Finally, though, they didn’t marry. “We were too young.”

A news director in Phoenix took a chance and promoted Salinas to coanchor of the evening news, and in 1997, she left Arizona State University without graduating and moved to Los Angeles to become an anchor at KVEA-TV, Channel 52, owned by Telemundo. She was 25 years old. It wasn’t long before she met Antonio Villaraigosa. “The first time that I recall, he was speaker of the assembly,” she says, “and I interviewed him.”