Marc Santia, the classic local boy who made good, is leaving Detroit for a job as a reporter at WNBC-TV in New York.
His last day at Channel 4 is next Friday.
"I'm very excited," Santia said Wednesday. "It's a great opportunity. But it's tough. This is home.
As at WDIV, Santia will specialize in crime and courts at WNBC. He laughed when it was pointed out New York, statistically, is a much safer city than Detroit.
Santia graduated from Roseville High School and Wayne State University, and started at WDIV as an intern in 1998. He has worked there as a production assistant, writer, special projects producer and Sky 4 reporter. In recent years he has served as an investigative reporter for the Local 4 Defenders squad.
Among the stories he has covered are the murders of two middle-class suburban women, Jane Bashara and Tara Grant, whose husband, Stephen Grant, is serving a long prison sentence for her murder and dismemberment. After Hurricane Katrina, he spent two weeks in New Orleans, reporting on the efforts of a relief team of Wayne County Sheriff's deputies.
In New York, Santia can tell them about the time he was shot at while on a story at his Detroit station.
As he relates on the WDIV web site, "We were flying over a hostage situation in Lincoln Park. "The police asked for our help to find a gunman in a high rise tower. We flew close to the building and in our monitor spotted the man, who aimed his rifle and shot at us!"
Lucky for WNBC, the gunman missed.
