Staff writer

Office phone: 252-441-1711

Email: cate.kozak@pilotonline.com

Cate Kozak is a general assignment reporter in the Nags Head bureau of The Virginian-Pilot. She mostly covers Outer Banks state and federal issues.

Cate has been a reporter in the Nags Head bureau since 1996. The first summer, she covered three hurricanes. She’s lost track of how many she has covered since. She has worked on everything from town board meetings to murder trials to moving of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse to shark bites to the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ flight.

Cate came to journalism in her late 20s when she returned to New York after living on the West Coast (mostly Monterey) for five years Earlier, she had studied wildlife management but fled the program after a terrifying encounter with pre-calculus. She later lucked out and found a great journalism program within driving distance at SUNY New Paltz. The internship was at the Legislative Gazette in Albany, covering the New York State legislature. She witnessed the buffoonery involved in the political process, and experienced the addictive rewards of journalism. She was hooked.

After she graduated, Cate free-lanced for about four years, much of it for the Kingston-based Daily Freeman. She had about as much responsibility as a staff reporter, at about one-tenth the pay (but with the flexibility to be with her three young`uns). And it really helped her skill level because she got to cover everything in Saugerties, the town where she lived, from superfund stories to the 25th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival.

Cate grew up in the Jersey suburbs about ½ hour from midtown Manhattan. She may not have met another kid who wasn’t Irish Catholic until she went to high school. Her father was a camera man for CBS-TV from the dawn of television, working on news as well as entertainment shows, and she learned a lot from him about how to handle power and celebrity. He used to come home everyday with four newspapers and a ton of great stories. That’s probably why Cate found the news business to be a natural fit.

Cate has three children -- two in college, and one about to be. They’re all talented in music and writing, but none profess to be aspiring reporters.