Greg Rivara’s memories of his work are vivid, colored with details torn from paperback crime novels.

He remembers the shirt his wife, Joelle McGinnis, was wearing when he first caught sight of her in the Campbell Hall newsroom; he even remembers the length and style of her hair. He quotes not only the familiar “Print the News and Raise Hell” but mentions it was printed on green-lined paper and tacked to the western wall.

While the cops-and-courts reporter for the Northwest Herald, Greg witnessed the execution of triple-murderer Charles Albanese. His recollections spill quickly, randomly and almost in whispers.

“Charles Albanese. A-L-B-A-N-E-S-E. He smoked Kool cigarettes. There was not a lot of question of whether he was guilty, although he maintained his innocence,” Greg says. “There was so much food there for the media. I found it out of place, because they were going to take a man’s life. I was so nervous I couldn’t eat. I thought I was going to throw up. Everyone else was eating.”

Interviewed afterward by TV reporters kept outside, he called the process “humane.”

“I regret that,” he says a decade later. “It was very clinical. I don’t know if it was humane or not, but it was clinical.”

The Oglesby native came to NIU to study law. A family friend (and attorney) advised him to learn to write. He’d already strung sports for the LaSalle News Tribune, and applied at the Star on a wager with Hallie Hamilton.

“I bet him a Coke I wouldn’t be hired,” Greg says, “and I was.”

In journalism, he found an opportunity to attack hypocrisy.

“I liked exposing people for who they were, and invariably that’s always about someone doing something to someone who can’t fight for themselves,” he says. “I get that rush. I get excited about a good news story, a good job of reporting.”

After NIU, Greg worked the crime beat at the Ottawa Daily Times and the Kane County Chronicle. After seven years in Crystal Lake, half of those in the courthouse, he returned to Kane County as managing editor in 2001. Under his watch, circulation has been growing 4 percent annually, and the paper has launched a Sunday edition.

He’s also found two good reasons to leave the cops and courts to others: son Quintin, 2, and 4-month-old daughter Gianna.