When I was just starting out as a reporter working a temporary gig at The Associated Press’ Buffalo, N.Y., bureau, I got a crazy assignment. Interview this doctor who has invented snap-on hair. Yup, it’s exactly what it sounds like. The guy would screw snaps into your skull and then make hairpieces to match. When you pulled them off, they would go “snap! snap! snap! snap!” It was a fairly salacious story for the times, and it was picked up by The AP nationally and printed all over the country. When I first started at Nebraska bureau of The AP the following year, I was even known as the “snap-on hair dude.”
Imagine my surprise this week when I was perusing titles by true crime author Anne Rule when I recognized a name. The main character, a doctor who had allegedly poisoned his wife, in “Last Dance, Last Chance” was Dr. Anthony Pignataro. This is the very same doctor who had invented snap-on hair. As far as I can tell, he’s still behind bars. So I got the book, needless to say.
Imagine my surprise when searching through it to find that I’m actually in the book. Rule quotes my article as showing how Pignataro had started getting national attention for his invention. You can read the section that quotes me on Google here.
It’s not the way I had hoped to get my name into print in an actual book, but hey, I’ll take all the publicity I can get, no matter how small.
