John Rabe
Host John Rabe was born in 1966 in Detroit. He moved to Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, on the Canadian border, in 1969. Rabe's first radio job was at WLXX, a small station named for the Soo Locks. He started as DJ on weekend nights, and two years later was hosting morning "drive," as the senior on-air staff member -- at 18 years old!
Rabe's first public radio job was covering city and county government for WKAR in East Lansing. (He crashed the station car his first month on the job.) After graduating from Michigan State University with an English degree, he moved to Fort Myers, Florida, to host Morning Edition at what was then WSFP-FM. Inexplicably, three years later, WHYY in Philadelphia hired him to do mornings. There, Rabe learned to love live radio from Neil Tickner and Mark Vogelzang, to whom he is eternally grateful.
But mornings are a grind, and after two years, he went to Minnesota Public Radio, where he, variously, hosted All Things Considered and a call-in show, produced the documentary Walking Out of History, about Ernest Shackleton's Endurance voyage, and reported. Six years later, MPR partnered with KPCC in Pasadena, and, sick of cold and snow, Rabe moved West.
Rabe's been at KPCC for going on seven years. After hosting All Things Considered and reporting on health care and housing issues, he's very excited to create a show that will let him combine anchoring with field reporting.
Queena Kim
Producer Queena Sook Kim was born and raised in Southern California. She graduated from New York University in 1991 and spent three years teaching elementary school for the Inglewood Unified School District. Afterwards Queena was awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Seoul, Korea.
Queena traveled extensively through Asia before attending UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Upon graduating from Berkeley, Queena reported for the Wall Street Journal in Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles. Her print stories have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Modesto Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Weekly.
Before joining Off-Ramp, Queena worked on KPCC's arts and culture show Pacific Drift. Her audio stories have also aired on Studio 360 and Day To Day, and the New York Times Web site.
Marc Haefele
Marc Haefele has been writing and reporting about Los Angeles and California for more than 25 years. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The New York Times, LA Weekly, LA Alternative, and The Jewish Journal. Before he came to LA, Haefele worked at Random House and Doubleday, where he edited authors Philip K.Dick and Isaac Asimov, and discovered Steven King. His book reviews have appeared in LA Weekly, LA Alternative, Boston Review, and The Morristown NJ Daily Record.
Haefele won the Greater LA Press Club award for Best Column in 1998, and was also morning drive host on KPFK-Radio. Since 2001, he's been "The Dean of City Hall Reporters" on KPCC's All Things Considered.
Haefele got his BA at NYU and his MA at CalState LA.
