What stories have you really enjoyed working on?
What’s interesting is that oftentimes, positives come out of tragedies. When the coronavirus pandemic started, it killed a number of people in a Seattle-area nursing home. I was there almost from the beginning. We were trying to figure out what was going on. Nobody knew how it was transmitted. People were dying, and it was terrifying. Fast-forward a few weeks, and I met a woman whose mother was inside that nursing home. She and her sister were sitting outside of her mother’s room. I will not forget this: There was a big window where her mother was sitting. She was in there just for like a knee injury or hip injury. She was trying to rehab, and she got Covid. She got very, very sick. They were afraid she was going to die. And they're sitting outside the window and they're talking to her and they're eating lunch with her, but they can't touch her. Hands on the window, waving, trying to call, talking through the window. I was so touched by that, watching that happen. By the way, her mother is out of the nursing home. She is thriving. She survived. Sometimes it's the story after the story that is the beautiful scenario.
Any others that have had a lasting impact?
There’s a story of a young girl, and again it starts with tragedy. She was in her house in Libya when a rocket hit their home, and she lost her leg. She was in the hospital, and I visited her there in Misrata. Someone saw the story and wanted to help her, and they brought her over to the United States. They got her a prosthetic, and now she’s thriving. It’s often something beautiful that comes out of something terrible.
What is something that people don’t know about you?
I love animals to an absolute fault. I have almost missed live shots because I am petting someone’s dog. One time I was petting a pig and the producer was screaming at me, “Please stop!” We joke about that all the time. When I am super stressed out, I will find a dog to pet. And I treat other people’s dogs like they’re mine. I will pick them up and roll around on the ground with them. People are like, “She’s insane.”
What advice would you give to someone interested in a similar career path?
If you’re going to be a correspondent, it’s rough on your family. You are away a lot, in unfamiliar territory. I like to tell people I’m better in a crisis than I am in real life. You do end up going from crisis to crisis. Disasters or shootings or riots or protests. Sometimes it can be really heavy, and we’re all thinking, feeling beings. We are human, and it does take its toll. That being said, you get to learn about so many different people and lifestyles and subjects. It’s just the most endlessly interesting job that I think anyone could ever have. You will never, ever be bored.
