RIP Laura Myers, the very essence of courage

Laura Myers never, ever quit.

That’s the thing I will always remember about the Review-Journal’s hardworking, long-suffering political reporter. Laura died Friday after a long battle with cancer. She was just 53.

A colleague at the R-J said recently, “If Laura were a man, she would have been a Navy SEAL.” I chuckled at the image, since Myers was more Peace Corps than Special Forces. But I realized instantly he was right: Laura had a steely drive that those who have been through SEAL training is more necessary to succeed than physical strength or technical proficiency.

Laura never let her illness get in the way of her work. I recall her emailing me from a hospital room, asking if I wouldn’t please tape-record this editorial board meeting or that candidate interview, and then send her the audio file. I did, and she had a story up on the R-J’s website before I knew it.

She was absolutely everywhere. I recall thinking that Laura worked harder than any other staffer I knew at the paper, and certainly she worked harder than me. Rare was the political event that I didn’t walk in to find Laura already set up, her iPad atop a portable keyboard, tape recorder at the ready.

We’d compare notes occasionally, and bounce ideas for stories around. She was a fierce competitor and hated to get scooped on anything. When I filled in as a guest host for “Nevada Week in Review” on VegasPBS, I always knew Laura would be a great guest, full of information and insights.

Her career wasn’t only about writing about politics, however. Although she was a native daughter of Las Vegas, journalism and the Peace Corps showed her the world, and she had insights from that career she brought to bear on her work at the R-J. She was as bold and courageous working overseas as she was confronting politicians at home.

Away from politics, she liked to hike. Many is the time I’d turn to Twitter and see a Laura Myers original photo taken from a nearby mountain peak.

We covered several election cycles together, starting in 2010, with the improbable Sen. Harry Reid’s victory over tea partier Sharron Angle. In 2012, presidential candidates. And last year, a gubernatorial run against virtually no one. In each race, Laura did the work of 10 regular reporters.

Others have said, correctly, that Laura was occasionally accused of bias. The funny thing was, she was accused of being a secret right-winger by liberals, and of being a total leftist by conservatives. She never bothered with the labels, or the criticism, and instead just focused on her reporting. It was the right approach.

It’s hard to imagine the campaign trail of 2016 — a cycle Laura would have loved — without her. In fact, I remember the exact moment I realized that something was really wrong: The day I showed up for the early Hispanics in Politics breakfast meeting, and Laura wasn’t there. Only a force of nature could keep her away, I thought.

Laura suffered incredibly because of her illness, but she never let it show. She probably never realized that in so doing, she was an inspiration to her colleagues. If Laura could do her job fighting literally for her life, there’s really nothing the rest of us have to complain about by comparison.

I’ll always remember Laura as a person who never, ever quit, who tackled her job with the determination of a SEAL, who always showed up to cover the story. And I’ll miss her.