By KEVIN WING | Chairperson, Media Museum of Northern California

Craig Heaps, a longtime San Francisco Bay Area and northern California television journalist who worked at Oakland’s KTVU for nearly three decades, has died.

Heaps was 68 when he died April 29 after undergoing heart surgery.

The veteran reporter and producer was also a longtime correspondent for the then-San Francisco news bureau of CNN.

Heaps retired from KTVU in 2014 after a nearly 30-year career there as a news reporter, producer and writer. He was hired in the mid-1980s by KTVU’s legendary news director, Fred Zehnder. He covered, among many stories through the years, the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and the Oakland Hills firestorm in 1991, the latter of which was — at that time — the largest urban wildfire in U.S. history.

While working at KTVU, Heaps did double duty, carving out a long tenure as a news correspondent for CNN’s San Francisco news bureau, covering news stories throughout California and the West Coast for the Atlanta-based news network.

Before arriving at KTVU, Heaps was a reporter and anchor at KSBW in Salinas.

During the last several years, Heaps — who once said he was legally blind without his glasses — relied on the assistance of Chase, a black Labrador and a service dog for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Following Heaps’ death, the service agency officially retired Chase. The black Labrador will live out his remaining years with Heaps’ wife, Patti, and family.

Tributes from Heaps’ friends and colleagues have poured in on social media sites like Facebook since his death was announced in late April.