SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — Katie Zacharia, who was fired after serving only five days as White House press secretary, grew up on California’s Central Coast and remembers the town of Cambria as “a liberal cesspool” — boring, not nearly conservative enough for her and suffering from a “huge drug population.”

That was the characterization she gave to the area she called home throughout most of her childhood, according to an interview on a conservative TV network.

Zacharia, a former political commentator on Newsmax and Fox News, debuted in the press secretary position on Monday, taking over the role from Karoline Leavitt.

During her first and only week in the position, she fielded a host of headlines about whether she misrepresented her legal credentials after calling herself a lawyer despite failing the bar exam.

White House officials also questioned if she was capable of doing the job after she only took three questions from reporters during a 15-minute-long press briefing Tuesday, according to CNN reporting.

Zacharia was fired on Friday.

The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump asked her to “reconsider” the job, saying “I don’t think you need this.”

Born as Kate Sharon Black in 1984, according to Britannica, she was adopted and raised in Southern California for the first few years of her life.

Cambria is a tiny, liberal town that’s a good vacation destination, she warned viewers, but “do not raise your kids there.”

She then went on to label the community as a drug haven.

“A lot of drugs, meth, pot. I mean, it’s just south of Big Sur, so you’re dealing with this huge drug population,” she said during the interview. “I was one of the few people in my high school that did not participate in the debauchery.”

Zacharia attended Coast Union High School and later went on to graduate from Pepperdine University in Malibu with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a juris doctor degree, according to her LinkedIn page.

A 2003 high school yearbook contains several photos of then Kate Black, with one caption describing the long-haired teenager as radiating “that friendly Coast Union feeling to the world.”

On another page, she was awarded the “most talkative” yearbook superlative, according to photos shared with The Tribune.

“I still get these messages from middle school, high school friends, ‘You were the most outspoken conservative, even in middle school,’ in this liberal cesspool,” she said on “The Anchormen Show.”

She described herself as the conservative “black sheep” of her family.

“And that’s all thanks to the great, late Rush Limbaugh. He raised me as a young kid on the radio.”

The White House did not immediately respond to The Tribune’s request for comment.

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