At the time when Cassandra asked me to be part of Reclaim13, I had a 13-year-old daughter… It sickens me, the monsters who are out there that prey on vulnerable children. The average age of girls who are trafficked is 13. It’s so sad that an organization like this is needed - to end human trafficking.It happens here it happens in DuPage County. This organization was started by this amazing woman, Cassandra Ma. ![]() My family has been incredibly supportive - and my friends don’t be afraid to ask people for support. I still have to go through more frequent visits and still maintain some treatment of sorts in order to hopefully keep from coming back, but all is well. I almost learned the hard way the price you pay. I’m fiercely passionate about this: take care of yourself, please, please, please. Had I not gone and obtained that mammogram, who knows? Thank goodness, thank God, I had gotten to it before it was too late. What if I wouldn’t have given myself that gift? I was extremely lucky that I caught early. I went without a mammogram.For Christmas of 2018, I told myself I was giving myself this gift of a mammogram. ” and put ourselves very low in the priority ranking. You hear this… learned the hard way the price and it becomes cliché, but as women, as moms, we take care of everyone else you pay. I’m so incredibly fortunate to have the group of friends that I have in the western suburbs…it’s also the community that has welcomed me and sustained my longevity in the Chicago area.Ībsolutely. When you move around, you don’t know who you’re going to find to move into your circle. One of them was always there to take me to appointments during my breast cancer ordeal if my husband couldn’t. As moms, we bounce ideas about child-rearing off each other. They have helped me through all kinds of things. I don’t have any sisters - I have two brothers - but I have a circle of female friends, and we call ourselves the sisters in Christ. In that year’s time, I had made a lot of friends who lived in this area. ![]() It just felt right, and - of course - the schools in this area are incredible. We landed here in 1995…and it felt familiar. We both needed to find an area that felt homey. We lived in the city for a year, but my husband and I both grew up in the suburbs. You can’t let somebody’s rejection of you define your path. I’d get a rejection letter, but you just keep pressing on. I feel so blessed…but back in Richmond, I used to have probably a two-inch thick file of rejection letters from news directors around the country that I would send tapes out to. I started here in Chicago in January of 1994. He went to management and said, “There’s this gal filling in on GMA, and I think we need to give her a shot.” We used to joke that I owe him 10 percent of my salary. He came to do live shots in Richmond, and I became bold enough to say, “How come you never have a woman fill in for you for the weather on GMA?” Soon after, he called and said, “You know what? You should be filling in for me on GMA.” After filling in on GMA in 1993, I immediately started getting phone calls from stations around the country… There was a gentleman who still has my heart, Jerry Taft. While I was in Richmond, I met a man by the name of Spencer Christian who did the weather for a very long time on Good Morning America (GMA). Another job came along in Youngstown, OH, and then a position in Richmond, VA. If you don’t take the risk, you’ll never know.” So, I took the risk, and I got the job, and I loved every single four months of it that I was there. I remember talking to my mom, and she said, “You never want to look back and regret. I going from a full-time job with benefits to making $5.50 an hour as the weekend weatherperson in Wheeling, WV. You’re doing this.” I had been doing some on-camera work at the time, so I applied for the job. ![]() I didn’t have a degree in meteorology (I later went back and got my meteorology certification through Mississippi State University), but he said, “Listen, you’re learning this. A meteorologist position in Wheeling, WV was advertised in a paper known as The Pittsburgh Press, and thenKDKA meteorologist Brian Sussman encouraged me to apply. I learned a lot about meteorology just by doing that. Just because I found it fascinating, I would hang out, on my own time, with one of the meteorologists. ![]() They would read really fun weather books to kids, books I really connected with, Little Cloud by Eric Carle. Fast-forward a bit.I did my internship at KDKA Radio…then I got a job at KDKATV in advertising and promotion.Part of my job was to accompany the talent to speaking engagements. I wanted to talk to people through media somehow. I grew up in Pittsburgh, home of KDKA Radio, the world’s first commercial radio station…I was so influenced by the medium. I had this idea back in 7th grade that I wanted to go into broadcasting.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |