POPLAR BLUFF WILL ALWAYS BE HOME FOR CORRESPONDENT AT CNN

POPLAR BLUFF -- There's really no place like home. For world-traveling CNN correspondent Charles Jaco, home always will be Poplar Bluff.

Television viewers around the world became familiar with Jaco's face as he reported on the Gulf War, first from Saudi Arabia, then from Kuwait City.

Several days ago, he left his Persian Gulf assignment so he could be with his mother, Virgie, who underwent surgery at AMI Lucy Lee Hospital Tuesday morning.

"It's good to be back," said the 40-year-old Jaco, who is headquartered at the CNN bureau in Miami, Fla.

Jaco normally visits family and friends here at least twice a year.

Jaco departed Kuwait on March 4, and arrived in Poplar Bluff Friday.

He did make one stop on his way home - a three-day stay in Cairo, Egypt, to pop "the big question" to Pat Neal, the CNN bureau chief and correspondent there. She accepted, but no wedding date has been set.

"Right now we're trying to decide where to live," he said. "I'm based in Miami and she's based in Atlanta."

Jaco met his fiance in January 1989 at the execution of serial killer Ted Bundy.

"We didn't date, but maintained a friendship," he said. "In the last eight to nine months it's turned into more."

Neal originally is from Memphis, where she began her career as a TV producer.

Jaco has worked with CNN since December 1988. His coverage of the war and events leading up to it began in August when he went to Baghdad for two weeks. He then spent five weeks in Jordan before returning to Miami. He returned to the gulf on Jan. 9, reporting on the war from Saudi Arabia. As allied troops prepared to liberate Kuwait City, Jaco and his CNN team went in ahead of them.

"We (arrived) in Kuwait City 10 hours before the allied troops," said Jaco. "Just across the Kuwait border, we (began to) set up our satellite. There was a 500-pound bomb that had dropped and augured into the asphalt. We were all leaning up against it and taking pictures. We did not know though, until we were told, that it had not been deactivated and was still very much alive," he said smiling.

His stay, though, did not include many smiles or much fun.

"There were mines all over the place," he said of the trip to Kuwait City. "We counted 50 land mines about 20 feet from the car. There also were lines of burned-out Iraqi personnel carriers and bodies. You could see black (burned) figures with hands grasping into the air. This (hands) was the only way to tell they were human. The road itself was covered with uncharged bombs."

Jaco said he and the crew had to drive around the uncharged bombs, but couldn't get too far off the road because of the mines. The group literally "picked out" the way to Kuwait City.

"We also heard a lot of firing and didn't know if it was snipers or not," he said.

Rain was falling as Jaco's CNN crew entered the Kuwait capital. The rain mixed with the residue of Kuwait's burning oil wells to form an oily mist. The mist made the sky turn pitch black at about 3 p.m., he said.

"When I washed my hair, it looked like somebody had changed the oil in their car," he said.

Upon arriving in Kuwait City, Jaco said Kuwait resistance people greeted them with hugs and smiles. On a wall there, the people had written, "We Love You All" (allied troops), "God Bless George Bush" and "We Love CNN."

"They (resistance people) gave us protection," Jaco said. "We became their only source of information to the outside world."

Upon arriving in Kuwait City, Jaco said the crew had set up a satellite phone and he was giving a live report when the crew was told by Kuwait resistance people to "kill the lights.

"They were firing weapons down the road and had said an Iraqi tank was heading for us," said Jaco. "I was lying on the asphalt on the phone telling what was going on. It was a false alarm, but when they start firing weapons you don't know what'll happen."

Once the crew got the satellite transmitter working, Jaco said a line of vehicles began coming their way. In the vehicles were allied troops, one being a Kuwaiti naval lieutenant carrying a flag.

"I just interviewed him right there," said the correspondent.While in Saudi Arabia, Jaco also stayed at a hotel in Dhahran where air raids were "extremely loud.

"There were 30 scuds fired at Saudi and we took most of them," he said. "You could only sleep for about two hours at a time because of the air raid alarms. While in Eastern Saudi Arabia, we were taking scud missiles and didn't know if they were chemical or not. Three patriots intercepted missiles about 1,500 feet over our head."

Covering hostilities is not new to Jaco.

"What I covered before was disorder, this was war," he said.

When Panama was invaded, CNN sent Jaco there for three weeks. Before joining CNN, Jaco worked for the NBC Radio Network. He covered the civil war in El Salvador and was given assignments in Cuba and Bolivia.

In March 1988, he was severely beaten following a report he made in Panama that the country's dictator, Gen. Manuel Noriega, disliked. In May 1990, back in Panama, Noriega declared Jaco an "enemy of the state.

"I went into hiding for three days and was escorted out by military (personnel)," he said.

Another incident Jaco cited occurred on Thanksgiving 1989.

"I was pinned down by gunfire in San Salvador, snuggled up against a curb," he said.

Definitely not your every day, 9-to-5 job.

"It's part of the job," Jaco said. "You cover a lot of disorder in news and you just decide what risks you're going to take and what risks you're not. I love what I do. This job has a little of everything - travel, interesting people and you get to watch history being made."

Where will Jaco go from here?

"I'll have to check with CNN, but I'll probably be going back to Kuwait," he said, adding that CNN may have a permanent presence there. "It's all up in the air.

"Our grandchildren will be living with whatever changes this war has brought about. There are still a lot of major questions to answer - Will there be a form of democracy in Kuwait or not? What will become of Israel? Will Saddam Hussein fall from reign? - so the stay there will be long.

"There is one thing I have learned through all of this," said Jaco. "People are all alike, but they're all different. They have the same emotions, but think and act in different ways. It is an endlessly fascinating variety of life.

"Another thing I learned is that people are basically good. If there's any message here, it's that the good guys are winning."

Jaco received a lot of letters and packages while in Saudi Arabia. One lady from Nebraska even sent him a sweater, which "fit perfectly," he said.

Now, Jaco is having to grow accustomed to being recognized by total strangers and asked for his autograph.

"That's hard to get used to," he said.

To the millions of people who watch him as a CNN correspondent, Jaco has become a popular household name and face. He will be the first to tell you, however, he is "just a news correspondent."

When he is not working, Jaco loves to swim, fish and snorkel. His favorite hangout is the Florida Keys. When it comes to eating, he enjoys "just about anything that's smaller than me and doesn't bite first." He is proficient in Spanish and speaks some French and Arabic.

Jaco is the only child of Virgie and Leroy Jaco. His father died in 1968. He was raised in Poplar Bluff, graduating from high school there in 1968. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor of arts degree in English. He subsequently graduated from Columbia University in New York with a master's degree in journalism.

In 1976, he began working for a radio station. In 1979, he was employed by the NBC Radio Network in New York and was transferred to Washington, D.C., in 1982. He remained there until joining CNN in 1988.