About The Bay: 94-Year-Old Bay Area Journalist Defies Odds

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- A San Francisco newspaper reporter is still on the beat at an age when most of his colleagues are just plain beat, if alive at all.

San Francisco Chronicle Science Editor David Perlman is 94 and chasing down stories 72 years after he first got into the business. He's been at his current post for 6 decades - and counting.

"It's being able to work and at something you really like," he enthused. "I mean, I have fun all the time, working, you know, discovering things that make good stories."

"Last week, I drove up to Bodega Bay on a story. Yesterday, I was out at Golden Gate Park."

It's no wonder, then, that colleagues many years his junior are in awe.

"Very spry," Ellen Huet, 23, described Perlman. She recently worked with him on a story and shared a byline. "It feels really sort of inspiring that he still gets to do what he loves to do and is so good at it and he'd be willing to work with someone so young as me."

"The freshness of his take on the city and the freshness of his describing the world around him is just remarkable," added Chronicle urban design critic, John King.

Perlman is quick to point out that he enjoys no special treatment. He faces deadlines just like the rest of the reporters.

"My boss wants to know when I'm going to finish this story I'm writing," he described a phone call. "I will finish it when I get finished."

"He's a kid, though," Perlman described boss. "They're all kids around here."

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