Remembering Call Kurtis Volunteer Luanne 'Thursday"
Luanne Hyde just couldn't retire. She worked for the Stockton Record, raised her kids, had yet another career running a paramedics school, and helped her husband run his trucking business from their Lodi home. he started volunteering for us at CBS13 in 2014 and right away went undercover to help us investigate a series of complaints involving unscrupulous locksmiths. She posed as a homeowner who was locked out of her house. It helped us catch one guy lying about the problem to perform a much more costly repair.
Hyde was an optimist who was kind, gentle, and infectious in the best possible way. To give you an idea of her character, she once received two traffic tickets within 3 weeks and said an officer friend suggested she bring them to him to fix. "I told him his officers were doing their jobs," she told me. "I was doing wrong in both instances. The officers were right."
Hyde had a wicked sense of humor, with a laugh that ranged from a deep barrel laugh to a giddy giggle. We'd hear both in the newsroom every Thursday, when she earned her name as Luanne 'Thursday', helping solve viewer consumer complaints.
"I come here on Thursday because this is the highlight of my week," she told us in a 2020 interview. "Helping people solve their problems that they can't solve themselves; I go home really getting a high from it."
Even during the pandemic, while battling her own ailments, she kept helping viewers from home; --some with EDD complaints. One case involved a blind man swindled by a solar company.
When she wasn't helping viewers, she enjoyed researching family trees, quilting, traveling with her husband of 62-years, Milton. She also tended to quite the garden.
Her compassion for others was clear through life and even after her death last week. She donated her organs. Luanne was 81-years-old.