Take every media image of college students in the late 1960s, and think “opposite.” That was Gene Mustain as the Northern Star sports editor. Few of Gene’s friends back then would have predicted he’d become one of the nation’s best investigative reporters and a best-selling author. They had him tagged for management.

“Jimi Hendrix he was not,” said Star cohort Ray Gibson. “His wardrobe came complete with the blue blazer and penny loafer shoes.”

Gary Stein, Gene’s assistant sports editor at the Star and a longtime columnist at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, also remembers him as an impeccably dressed, well-groomed fraternity boy.

“But damn if he didn’t get down and dirty with the best of ’em when it came to reporting and writing,” Stein said. “Even back in college, his stuff just sang. He had the kind of writing style where you could tell it was Gene’s story, even if you didn’t see his name. It was that distinctive, that colorful.”

Gene left the Star after his junior year to work for Bud Nangle in NIU Sports Information. He might still be writing sports today had not Professor Hallie Hamilton pulled him aside one day and said, “Have you ever thought about news? Why limit yourself?” The thought resonated, and a news internship with his hometown Waukegan News-Sun confirmed it. When Gene graduated in 1969, he left his sports writing career in DeKalb.

Today, Gene is best-known for his books about “some of the worst people in the world” – the New York mafia. His 1988 best seller about John Gotti, “Mob Star,” was followed by “Murder Machine” and “Gotti: Rise and Fall.” The latter became a highly-rated HBO movie.

Gibson points to Gene’s earlier work as a defining moment. As a Chicago Sun-Times reporter in the early 1980s, Gene’s reporting about a potential scandal involving Cardinal Cody touched off a newspaper war.

“It was Tribune vs. Sun Times,” Gibson said, “with the Tribune coming to the Cardinal’s defense … and the Sun Times blasting away with headlines that all but said the Cardinal had stolen funds from the church and had a girlfriend.”

In 1986, Gene moved to the New York Daily News, where he’d stay until 1999, first as a general-assignment reporter and then as a special projects writer, covering major stories around the world.

Today, Gene teaches journalism half a world away, at the University of Hong Kong … and draws on his Northern Star memories.

“I try to get them excited and passionate about journalism and the journalist’s mission in the ways I was, when I was at the Northern Star,” he said. “And one thing I always tell them is, don’t limit yourselves.”