El Presidente The Story of David Bolton

by Paul Vercammen

Long before David Bolton ascended to 2023 El Presidente of Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days, just another lofty position and title for him, he slept in his Honda Accord.

For four and a half weeks in 1992, he crashed on a futon that replaced the removed passenger seat.

David needed to be in San Jose on weekdays to work on the broadcast side of a soccer tournament and take more baby steps to launch an international production company.

“I didn’t have enough money to pay for a hotel since I was already splitting the rent on a house in Santa Barbara with my cousin,” Bolton recalled. “I parked outside Red Lion, in their guest parking lot, used the pool and Jacuzzi, used the outdoor shower nearby. No one at the hotel asked me anything.”

Life in 1989; few security guards, fewer questions.

Flashback to earlier that decade, when a police scanner hissed “victim with multiple stab wounds” on Santa Barbara’s Eastside.

David and I ran out of the KEYT newsroom like someone was chasing us.

We had just been paired up on weekends by the brilliant news director and anchor King Harris.

“We worked fast,” David recalls. “Nothing could stop us. We’d get there quickly and get the evidence, the pictures, and the interviews.”

We rushed down TV Hill in a clunky white KEYT station wagon, often surprising police with our quick arrival.

David handled a bulky 40-pound camera, shot videotape, and recorded my interviews as we reported on a near fatal attack.

The Bolton-Vercammen alliance, teaming two Santa Barbara High School graduates jacked up on uncut adrenalin, was born on February 6, 1985.

We laughed hard, worked harder.

We often ate lunch standing up, at times a burrito because it’s easy to eat with one hand and keep the other one

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