by Laura Castañeda

I never knew Tommy Sablan. I never knew he attended San Diego City College even though I had taught there full-time for nearly 20 years. I had organized alumni reunions and sadly somehow, he was left off the list of honoree invites. 

I’d heard of his name and success as a recognizable radio personality in San Diego.  

So, I reached out to him hoping to get him to come speak to radio students. We met for coffee and chatted for over an hour. It turned out he was a Chula Vista native where he attended Castle Park Middle and High School and had a really powerful story. 

He told me about his humble beginnings and how he got his start in radio. And he openly revealed something that most families might keep sealed in a vault. He lost two brothers to heroin addictions. 

We became friends on Facebook and the more I saw his thoughtful and emotional posts, the more I thought his life story should be told. I asked if he’d consider letting a small group of City College news and film students do a documentary on his life. He agreed. 

The students started taping Tommy and his family and friends and former teachers. For more than a year the team attended community events and conducted interviews. 

As is often the case in the community college system, one by one the team of students moved on. They got jobs or transferred to four-year schools and never connected with me about the documentary. As faculty advisor of the project, I should have been more diligent, but life got in the way. We all just got busy. 

I retired from teaching full-time at San Diego City College in 2019. In 2020 I started reaching out to the lead producers Cristal Martinez and Maria Murcia to gather the hard drives and notes. I decided I had to finish what the students started. We owed it to Tommy Sablan. 

By this time, I was working full-time as the Community Opinion Editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune.  

On a whim, while chatting with my longtime friend, fellow journalist, and now Journalism Professor, Ninette Sosa, I asked If she knew Tommy Sablan from her radio days in San Diego. She said, “Yes.” 

I asked her if she would embark on a journey with me to finish what the students didn’t. To my surprise without hesitation, she agreed. No budget at all. 

Ninette and I completed this project with the help of an Arkansas-based excellent and creative editor, Brandon Sutterfield, who had never met Tommy Sablan. 

I am grateful to both of them.  

As storytellers, we all had the same vision, and working with them was a dream. 

I am grateful to the students who started the project, grateful for Tommy’s patience, and grateful to his family and friends for allowing us to interview them. 

 Technology allowed us to complete this project as we live in different states. Overall, I’m so pleased that we can share the film, “Little Tommy,” with the world. 

The Guam Daily Post

Dec. 1, 2023

The Coronado Island Film Festival recently featured “Little Tommy,” a short film telling the story of San Diego radio host Tommy Sablan, a man from a Guam family, who shared his struggles and acts of service to those in need while connecting with others through music as a disc jockey on the air.

The film not only won the festival's Best Local Documentary Short Audience Award but Nov. 9 was also declared Tommy Sablan Day by the city of Coronado.

The film was directed and produced by Ninette Sosa and showed how Sablan's efforts impacted the younger generation, especially during his talks on drug addiction at juvenile hall and schools when he was not hosting a radio show.

“I feel with all that I saw as a child – with two older brothers addicted to heroin – it relates to them. They know I've lived it instead of reading about it,” Sablan shared.

“I wish my brothers had someone they could relate to when they were kids. So, in a way, I am talking with my brothers through them,” Sablan said.

And while those issues began to affect his high school education, music brought him back to class.

A counselor advised him back in 1982 to partake in their school's career fair event. "'Why don't you listen to Jonathan Lang, a guy at Career Day, talk about radio?'” Sablan said, quoting his former counselor.

“So I went into the cafeteria instead of ditching school. Jonathan was talking about radio. I loved everything he was saying. He would ask trivia questions, music trivia, and he got a kick out of me because I would have the answer before I finished the sentence,” Sablan recalled. 

He was then invited to the radio station, K-Best 95, where he got a tour and found his career in radio.

Years later, radio helped him connect with the local community, initiating events including a 5K run called Finish Chelsea's Run, where 3,500 participated to honor the late Chelsea King who went missing in 2010.

For the holidays, he created a Christmas donation project in which he and the community would set up a tree and bring gifts and groceries to help families in San Diego, inspiring over 20 radio stations across the United States to practice the tradition. 

The film features personal family moments and heartwarming accomplishments celebrated by the San Diego community. It also highlights Sablan's legacy and a new chapter in his life: becoming a grandfather.