Spartan Profiles: Bonnie Cardone

SKIN DIVER

            In February, when she became editor of Skin Diver, the world's largest scuba diving magazine with more than a million readers, it aptly capped a 25-year career in which she did everything but raise the Titanic. 

            In 1973, Bonnie Rittschoff Cardone, '63, took up diving in Los Angeles as a hobby into which she could channel her boundless energy. As she puts it, 'I got completely hooked.' Today she has logged more than 1,000 dives in Southern California, visiting all the Channel Islands. She has dived in Fiji, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Red Sea, the Sea of Cortez, and throughout the Caribbean.

            After joining Skin Diver in 1976, she wrote more than 400 articles. In 1987 she wrote the script for the two-hour video Scuba Diving America. She has published two books, Shipwrecks of Southern California (1989) and Fireside Diver (1992). 'I love unusual sights, I love the color and the adventure of it all,' says Cardone. 'It's really beautiful down there.' 

            A native of Chicago, Bonnie summered in Crystal Lake, where she always had a desire to go underwater 'to see what it looked like.' She touts her education at MSU, saying 'it provided me with a wonderful background for what I do now.' After working for two magazines, she and her husband moved to Los Angeles and she became a full-time mother raising two daughters. But she did not pass up an opportunity to work for Skin Diver, which allowed her to combine her hobby with earning an income. 'I feel extremely fortunate,' she says. 'I was at the right place at the right time with the right credentials.'

            Today, she continues to dive all over the world as she launches four separate editions of the magazine to different geographical markets. 'Diving is definitely a lifetime sport,' she notes. 'Just the other day, I dived with someone who's 79. And one of our cinematographers is 72.'