Editor's Note: Ann Miller has been a reporter with The Advertiser since 1980. She is a graduate of El Cerrito High School (Calif.) and San Francisco State University, where she played softball but not golf, her main beat. She never touched a golf club until she moved to Hawai'i, which is obvious now when you watch her play.

How can you look back at a 30-year career and choose one special memory above all others?

There have been three NCAA volleyball championships, decades of near-misses and a relentless run of All-Americans from Joyce Ka'apuni to Tita Ahuna and Dani Mafua. I've been immersed in Michelle Wie mania and "high-fived" Tadd Fujikawa eye-to-eye.

The first Special Olympics I covered remains the only event that brought tears of joy and awe. But only because I was sick in bed the day David Ishii won the Hawaiian Open and no one could see me cry.

When people ask what event I remember most I always throw them an underhanded curve. It wasn't any of the volleyball championships — NCAA or NAIA — or the craze Yuval Katz created. It wasn't at those even crazier Olympic Games in Atlanta. It wasn't even interviewing Tom Selleck in a jacuzzi in the UH training room.

It was Waimea winning the 1990 state high school softball championship. I still remember vividly the absolute shock and utter joy, and have never had to be reminded again that, in sports, anything is possible.

The greatest athlete? Don't even go there.

The people I remember with the most amazement are golfers and tennis and volleyball players, and all kinds of folks of every age in pretty much any sport, who caught my imagination because of their passion more than their precision.

But if I have to pick one memory it would be in this office. I knew no one when I moved here in 1980. Within days, a sports family of quirky, kind, incredibly talented and devoted co-workers adopted me. They have unconditionally loved me and had my back ever since, to say nothing of fixing my typos.

Most of us have been together 30 years, longer than I lived with my "real" family. It has been a remarkable ride and the thought of it ending ... well that also brings tears to my eyes.

They are my most indelible, lovely memory. It wasn't that tough a call after all.