First he took the microphone on the morning show at WRVQ 94.5-FM, fielding questions from Jeff Wicker, Betty Bodine and Melissa Chase. They told him he deserved the attention, and off-air assured him he did better than some celebrities.
Then he spent time with a WTVR TV-6 news crew that visited him, his wife, Rebecca, and his son, Christopher, at his South Side home. His mug, and story, made the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts.
He tried to adjust to seeing his face all over the city. Ukrop’s shoppers pointed at him. And while he drove to see his wife at her job, a woman pulled up in a car next to him, slowed down, and stared. “Then she propped up a Style Weekly,” Maz says, “and I started laughing.”
But lest his head swell, his co-workers kept him in check the next day. “You know how the guys are,” Maz says. ” ‘Can I have your autograph? Can I have your autograph?’ They were just picking on me the whole day.”
Apparently, City Hall was proud. Higher-ups left messages with his bosses, he says, saying he represented the city well. “They said everybody was wishing me a lot of success from downtown.”
Maz’s wife says the whole experience has put her shy husband in a unique spot. “But I guess he’s going to have to get used to it,” she says.
Coming soon for Maz is a less-glamorous task: school. His writing and music classes at John Tyler and J. Sargeant Reynolds community colleges are starting up for a second year. And he is ready to buckle down. “Hopefully I can take it pretty far,” he says.
Runners-up in the contest were Bryan Stevenson, Ray Chetti, Mary Ellen Olbrisch and Frances Burch, who earned the people’s choice award for snagging the highest number of online votes from readers. — J.R.
