Popular morning DJ bids fond farewell to Valley radio fans

WASILLA — She started her radio career on a teen-age dare 30 years ago and ended it just as abruptly two weeks ago when she resigned from Valley Radio, leaving her morning listeners in the dark about why she wouldn’t be waking up with them anymore.

“It kills me that I wasn’t able to thank them and explain why I couldn’t do it anymore,” popular Q99.7 FM personality Becky Nichols said Tuesday, her 48th birthday. “My listeners are the ones who got me through all my health issues inadvertently. I needed them to get me up and going for the past few years. I want them to realize how much they meant to me.”

As the creator of the daily “Q-Munity Corner” program to give locals a voice and the “Pet of the Week” program to help find homes for unwanted cats and dogs, Nichols never wanted to burden listeners with her own personal struggles.

But the truth is she’s been fighting for her life all these years against a disease that claimed the life of her brother in 1995 at age 42.

It’s called Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency and she happens to have the worst form of it. It means she’s lacking the necessary enzyme that protects her lungs and liver, causing those vital organs to harden more and more each year.

The only thing keeping her alive now is her weekly infusions of that enzyme at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, a medical procedure that would cost her $8,000 every month if she didn’t have health insurance and the assistance of a group called The Caring Voice Coalition.

“Even though I have no money coming in now, I have to figure out how to continue getting my treatments,” she said a day after realizing it wouldn’t be easy getting on disability insurance. “If I stop getting the infusions, six months from now I won’t be here. So that’s my top priority.”

She said that although it might appear that quitting her disc jockey job at Valley Radio was a bad idea because of the health insurance benefits alone, the stress of recent changes at the station on top of years of getting up at 4 a.m. and being the “bubbly morning person” have taken their toll. She also was diagnosed with Lupus this past year, which makes her even more tired, she said.

Although she took her brother’s advice in 1995 to get tested for the disease before he died, she put off treatment because she couldn’t afford it.

“The medicine was so completely out of my reach,” she said. “Or so I thought.”

It wasn’t until a blood clot traveled from her left leg through her heart and settled in her right lung four years ago that she finally sought solutions for her Alpha-1 affliction.

“I remember one night I was in the bathtub and thought my leg looked really weird and could barely walk,” she recalled. “I went to work the next day and I could hardly make it up the stairs to the studio. So I went to the hospital and they wouldn’t let me leave. That pulmonary embolism probably saved my life. Really, in a weird way.”

That’s when she met the doctor that made all the difference in her life, she said.

“Dr. Natalie Beyeler knew about Alpha. She had a patient who had died from it,” Nichols said. “She’s such a good doctor and the radio station was so patient with me. When I took a month off last July to have a radical hysterectomy because of endometriosis, that’s when I realized I wasn’t Superman anymore.”

She also had a “power port” inserted in her chest at that point so nurses no longer had to search for a good vein for her infusions.

Growing up in rural Maine with her four siblings, Nichols said she had no idea she was carrying a deadly disease. She thought she just had bad allergies.

“It’s a weird thing because my father had to have a weird gene and my mother had to have a weird gene and when they came together, it caused an enzyme deficiency,” she said, adding that one of her sisters also is carrying the disease, but in a much milder, latent form. “The infusions I get just elongate everything and make it a little easier for me.”

Nichols first hit the air in her hometown in Maine when she was 18 after some friends dared her to apply to the local station.

“I had never even been in a radio station. I had no idea what I was doing,” she said. “I’ll never forget when they left me alone to do it myself and Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ was playing and I immediately freaked. I took the needle off the record, then dropped it back down and it went skidding off and I started crying. But I guess they saw some potential in me.”

Nichols’ favorite memories over her years of working at radio stations in her home state, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Alaska include riding in a military refueling jet and waving at the F-16 pilots hovering a few feet away, interviewing musician Charlie Daniels and zooming down a runway in a jet-propelled truck as flames shot out the back of the vehicle.

But above all, Nichols cherishes the times when she was able to have a positive impact on someone’s life by simply being on the radio during a time of need.

“Being able to help a Valley family that had just lost everything is what it’s really all about,” she said. “The power of radio has helped touch people’s lives in ways nothing else can. I’m so glad I could use my strengths to make a difference out there.”

Nichols, who first worked as a nanny after moving to the Valley from Anchorage in 2002 to be closer to her widowed mother, said she’s not sure what life has in store for her now.

She might end up working for Immediate Care, the service that helped her 80-year-old mother when she needed assistance. Or she might continue to use her voice for public service announcements or advertising spots on a freelance basis.

She said she’s grateful John Klapperich hired her to work at the station nearly eight years ago and that its current operations manager, Ray Babowicz, has been so understanding of her sudden departure.

Babowicz said Thursday he actually had a next-door neighbor growing up who suffered from the same illness as Nichols and later died at age 35.

“Becky was able to put on a brave face for so long and never let on to her listeners how hard it was for her sometimes,” Babowicz said. “She really did have a big impact on this community and it will be difficult to fill her slot now.”

Nichols wishes Babowicz and the rest of the Spirit of Alaska Broadcasting crew the best. And although her future is uncertain, one thing’s for sure.

“I’ll never forget all the people in this community who enriched my life and gave me a reason to get up every morning,” she said. “I’m really going to miss them.”

Nichols can be contacted through e-mail at frequencym@yahoo.com.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.