It sounded at first like balloon pops to a young wire service reporter. Then she heard shouts of alarm spreading through the Ambassador Hotel's crowded ballroom that Robert F. Kennedy had just left. Something was wrong.

"You couldn't get out of the room because it was so packed. People were crying and screaming," says Sandi Gibbons, now a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

"I ran back close to the area where the shots came from and one of the Kennedy campaign workers said he'd been shot. I interviewed anybody that would talk to me."

As Hollywood remembers the day of Robert Kennedy's assassination in Emilio Estevez's "Bobby," asap sought out those who were really at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of California's Democratic primary election.

Their lives — and perhaps the course of a nation — changed as bullets were fired at close range by Sirhan Sirhan.

"One incident did change the course of history, and a lot of personal histories along with it," Gibbons says. "And I'm one of them."

Here are some of their stories:

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SANDI GIBBONS, at the time a reporter for the local wire City News Service and its broadcast subsidiary Radio News West.

What happened: When Kennedy finished his short speech, she headed straight for a pay phone to dictate a story. When she got there, she heard the pops. "I called my office and they put me on hold. They wouldn't even let me say who it was. Just 'City News, hold.' Click." She called an alternate number, handed the phone off to a bystander to hold the line from other reporters, and rushed back to the main room to find out what happened. "I confirmed he'd been shot, and went back and phoned in a bulletin. We had the first bulletin out."

Reflection: "I'll tell you what I learned as a reporter: You never let the candidate out of your sight. I learned it the hard way. I was there, obviously, but I did not see him shot. Had I walked into the pantry area, I would've seen the shooting. You never let a candidate out of your sight until they leave the building. I learned that. I felt very bad about it."

What changed: Because she'd been there on the night of the shooting, Gibbons was assigned to cover Sirhan's trial. It was her first full trial, but she never looked back. "It's the reason I'm here, I guess. After the Sirhan trial, trials are really what I did. ... If I had not been in the Embassy Room that night, I wouldn't be where I am." She spent the rest of her journalism career at CNS and the Los Angeles Daily News, and joined the DA's office in 1989.

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ED GUTHMAN, at the time national editor for the Los Angeles Times. He considered Kennedy a friend, having served as his press secretary when Kennedy was a senator. He's now a journalism professor at USC.

What happened: Guthman was there partly to meet with his old friend, but didn't walk out with Kennedy. "I had to get back to work," he said. After Kennedy was shot, Guthman says, "I went to where he was. I went with him to the hospital and stayed with him until he died. ... I was furious."

Reflection: Guthman recalls urging Kennedy in his previous campaign to hire formal bodyguards, but the politician refused. When Kennedy had run for Senate in New York, Guthman often arranged for local police to guard him. "One of the tragedies of it all is ... The L.A. police at that time wouldn't provide coverage for political candidates. It was something they wouldn't do. So there was no police coverage at the Ambassador Hotel that night."

What changed: "If he was elected president and had asked me to come back, I would've gone. ... I wasn't interested in a career in politics. I was a journalist. But he was different. ... I think having won California, he would've gotten the Democratic nomination. Had he been elected President of the United States, two things happen that are really important. Number one: the Vietnam War ends in 1969. Period. Not 1973, '74. Number two: No Watergate. To have both Kennedys and Martin Luther King — God. You look back on it and it's such a loss."

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Ryan Pearson is an asap staff reporter in Los Angeles.

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