A Trophy Assignment

WELL-HEELED: Kagan is outfitted by top designers.

Steven Granitz/ wireimage.com

CNN morning news anchor Daryn Kagan, ’85, has become a fixture at the Academy Awards. She has interviewed winners during and after the shows since 1999, and last year she conducted live interviews with stars as they arrived at the Kodak Theatre. She’ll be there again on March 23 for the 75th annual Oscar ceremony. STANFORD asked her for an inside scoop about life on the red carpet.

The dress and the diamonds are loaners. “CNN allows us to borrow from the top designers, but we can’t advertise them.” Kagan wore a Calvin Klein dress and $225,000 of Fred Leighton jewelry for a similar assignment at the Golden Globes in January.

Don’t bring food. The first time Kagan worked at the Oscar ceremony, she phoned her parents from backstage to share the excitement and her mother noticed that she was eating as she talked. “My mom says, ‘Please tell me you’re not at the Academy Awards with a sandwich stuffed in your purse,’” Kagan recalls, laughing. “Nobody told me, but they do feed you.”

Listen and talk at the same time. While Kagan chats up actors or directors, she is simultaneously listening to a spotter announce in her earpiece who’s coming down the rug and imagining what she’ll say next. “It’s all about multi-tasking. The hardest part is having an intelligent question ready for whoever walks up at that moment. But that’s what I love about live TV. Either you get it right or you don’t; there’s no second chance.”

Stake your turf. In the midst of a media gauntlet, Kagan and her five-person team are crowded into a 2-foot by 4-foot area where they must literally fight for position. “Our producer has this laminated CNN sign attached to a tongue depressor, very high tech, and he waves it to get people’s attention. Being CNN doesn’t hurt. Last year, Ian McKellen [nominated for his performance in Lord of the Rings] would only talk to us and the BBC.”

How about some love for the sound editing nominee? “It’s like the worst high school popularity contest” for both reporters and the nominees. “It’s all about where you are on the food chain. The publicists are working hard to get you to interview the people in the lesser known categories and the media are all scrambling to get the top-name people.” Last year, Kagan recalls, Reese Witherspoon (who briefly attended Stanford in 1995-96) and Ryan Phillippe agreed to stay with her while CNN aired commercials, then got the brushoff when Robert Redford walked up. “Redford was getting a lifetime achievement award, so I had to get him. Here Reese and Ryan have been patiently waiting and I go, ‘Okay, thanks, we don’t need you now.’ They were really mad.”

Keep the camera above the waist, please. Looking glamorous is part of the fun, “but as the night wears on, you sort of decompose.” By the end of the evening, Kagan has abandoned her heels and is conducting interviews in sneakers.

Take along some fatigues, just in case. The Oscar gig is a nice departure from her regular duties, but Kagan has no interest in switching from news to entertainment. “I wouldn’t want to report from war zones all the time and I wouldn’t want to do awards shows all the time.” In fact, the war zone may be next on her itinerary. According to Kagan, CNN may send her to Kuwait.

In China, a Prisoner Waits

JAILED: Shao received a 16-year sentence.

Courtesy Chuck Hoover

A Business School graduate who has spent the last five years in a Shanghai jail is the subject of a growing advocacy campaign by his classmates, who say he is innocent.

Jude Shao, MBA ’93, was arrested in April 1998 for tax evasion and subsequently convicted during what his friends say was a sham trial. Evidence that would have exonerated him, they say, was never allowed in court, and Chinese officials have since stonewalled attempts to appeal. He is serving a 16-year sentence in Shanghai’s Qing Pu prison.

Shao, a Chinese-born American citizen, founded China Business Ventures, exporting U.S.-made medical equipment to Chinese hospitals, soon after graduating from Stanford. Chinese tax auditors began investigating the company in 1997, later alleging that he had underpaid import and sales taxes totaling more than $300,000. Shao says that he paid the taxes and has the accounting records to prove it.

Caroline Pappajohn and Chuck Hoover, both classmates of Shao, are spearheading an effort to win Shao’s release that so far has included an aggressive letter-writing campaign and lobbying in Congress. When Hoover e-mailed GSB classmates in August to mobilize support, says Pappajohn, “there must have been 100 people respond the very next day wanting to know what they could do to help.” Recently, the group enlisted the help of John Kamm, founder and chair of the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit working to improve human rights in China. Kamm, who has intervened on behalf of many Chinese political detainees, was able to have Shao placed on a “prisoner list,” considered an important first step toward bringing attention to his case and having his sentence reduced.

Pappajohn is worried about Shao’s health and mental well-being. “He is incredibly depressed,” she says. “He only gets one visit a month from his sister [Jing Li] and the consul general [Doug Spellman]. I’m not sure he’s even been able to hug anybody since he went to jail.”

Pet Project

Tina Merrill pampers dogs for a living, but even she is amazed when clients at her pet-boarding facility ask whether the rooms have TVs. “Dogs don’t need TVs,” says Merrill, chuckling. “Some of our customers are rather eccentric.”

Well, yes. But Merrill, MBA ’99, isn’t running a typical kennel, either. Her “deluxe hotel for dogs,” Citizen Canine, provides four-star service for pooches whose owners are out of town. Located in Oakland, Citizen Canine has 50 rooms, some as large as 80 square feet, featuring amenities such as supervised playgroups, daily maid service and “cozy blankets.” Dogs that stay five nights at the deluxe rate ($42 per night) receive a complimentary bath. (Whether the dogs consider that a perk isn’t clear.)

For many pet owners, this may all seem extravagant, but Citizen Canine’s customers “have an elevated relationship with their dogs,” says Merrill. “The dogs are like their children.” Citizen Canine attempts to simulate a dog’s normal home life, according to Merrill, and both the animals and their humans seem to appreciate it. Despite rates more than twice as high as standard kennels, it is booked solid six months ahead and has served more than 3,000 pet owners, a few hundred of whom return several times a year.

“I knew the market was there,” says Merrill, who was frustrated by her own inability to find a place that would do more than keep her dog fed and watered. She developed the business plan for Citizen Canine while a student at Stanford and opened the facility in October 2000, just as the dot-com balloon was rapidly losing air. So far, the business has been recession-proof. Merrill has 18 employees running the 24-hour facility, and although “my Wall Street friends probably wouldn’t invest,” it is making a small profit.

Geared Up Again

Mark Estes

Twenty-eight years after he first appeared on campus, a Stanford superhero has returned to save unwary undergraduates from improper turns into oncoming traffic.

Campus bicycle program coordinator Ariadne Scott resurrected Sprocket Man, a comic book character created to promote bicycle safety in the 1970s, as part of a new safety drive this year.

She asked Sprocket Man’s creator, Louis Saekow, who now teaches design at The Art Institute in San Diego, to revamp the superhero’s look. Saekow, ’76, was happy to revisit the character, which he developed after his sophomore year as part of his work-study obligation. After graduating with a degree in biological sciences, he abandoned plans to attend medical school and instead started Louis Saekow Design. “Without Sprocket Man, I’d probably be a doctor by now,” he says.

The new, hipper Sprocket Man promotes many of the superhero’s old messages on posters around campus: “Ride on the right. Use a light. Wear a helmet. License your bike.” He also appears on T-shirts and in advertisements in the Stanford Daily.

“It’s an excellent way to deliver a serious message about bicycle safety in a fun, creative way,” says Scott, whose office has given away 5,000 bike lights as part of the safety campaign. “How could you not like a superhero?”