I was sick and scared — sitting in a San Francisco hotel room, afraid to move. It happens when your heart does not work the way it should.

Reassured by my electro-cardiologist, Dr. David Ploss, I had gone ahead with a weekend Bay Area trip. What I really needed was a chance to do what I know best, write a news story. The San Francisco Chronicle appeared appeared to give me that chance.

Bill Clinton was in town, campaigning for mayoral candidate Gavin Newsom, with the two scheduled for a rally at Newsom’s downtown headquarters. What did that matter back home in Humboldt County? I wasn’t sure. Still, I grabbed my camera and ventured to the spot just blocks away.

There, I found a cluster of satellite trucks, reporters, celebrities and lines of people. I also found tight security. Campaign nerds stopped me at the door and said I couldn‘t go in because I wasn’t with “San Francisco” medium and my Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department Press Pass did not count. No room for old Dave. Newsom’s people escorted me to the door, preventing me from videotaping my own ejection. No Clinton, no pictures, no story. No nothing. “Okay,” I whined as I left, “I’ll remember this if you ever come to Eureka.” And that, friends, is no idle threat.

Rejection goes with the territory. After 35 years in the business, I’ve been “dissed” by all creatures great and small, most of them unaware of the gravity of their mistake. Kid Rock doesn’t care that I once got kicked out of his concert. That’s okay, because he got kicked out of the house by Pamela Anderson. As my mother would have said, what goes around comes around.

By the way, the security guy who kicked me out of the Kid Rock concert is a changed man now. He has kicked drugs and is counseling other young people on the road to recovery. Can you now see life’s symmetry?

My parents always taught me to fearlessly meet new people in new places. That’s why they had taken me to a rally at Lompoc High School Auditorium in 1959 when John Kennedy was campaigning for president. I was 13, and I had come home with a paper on which he’d scribbled his name. I still have it.

I remembered that as I waited outside the Redwood Acres arena. Bill Clinton was coming to town, campaigning for his wife Hillary. More than a thousand people had gathered for a glimpse of him. Many would be turned away. I was vying with lots of free-lancers for limited press space. I considered myself lucky to get in. Many had brought their children to see Clinton, hoping to do for their young what my parents had done for me, expose them to the political process, good and bad.

My parents had taught me to use my heart and head. My father, the school principal, had shown me the power of rhetoric and truth. Listen carefully to what people say so you can decide for yourself what is right and wrong, he would say. My mother, the teacher, had taught me to learn from people who make mistakes and forgive those who make them. She would have forgiven Bill Clinton for his transgressions, but certainly not the stiffs who “kicked” her son out of the San Francisco rally. That was Mom. Challenge her values, but don’t mess with her David.

This time, at Redwood Acres, I passed muster as a reporter. I didn’t even have to show my I.D. Eureka is great that way. In moments, I was standing with my TV camera on a platform overlooking the stage. I’d done it a million times, hooking up the mike cord, focusing the lens on the stage and pushing the “record” button. It was all routine.

This Clinton rally, though, was different and fulfilling because it reminded me how much ground I had covered. First, my heart now beats like a Costco watch, thanks to strong faith and good medicine. I am no longer the guy who has lived beyond the factory warranty. I am Dave again, ready to dance with a rooster on my head.

This time, I had taken in my granddaughter Alyssa, so often hypnotized by Hannah Montana, Raven, and the Disney Channel. No longer the antsy, impatient nine-year-old, she stood transfixed for three hours. She vowed to tell her schoolmates the next day that she had seen a former president with her grandpa, and she wore her press pass to prove it. I’ll be taking her to watch me vote.

Life has a funny way of turning pages, closing one chapter to begin another. I’m sure I still don’t have much clout in San Francisco, but if those suits ever come up here, they’ll have to deal with me. This is “my house.”

Dave Silverbrand’s column appears weekly in The Eureka Reporter. He is a well-known local television personality.