Across Denver and Colorado, there is a cohort of viewers who weren’t even born when Channel 7’s Anne Trujillo began her long journey into Denver television history. She began with the station in 1984 and will drop the curtain on an amazing career in just weeks, November 17th. In between, it was more than a simple adventure.
Trujillo, the anchor of the station’s 5, 6 and 10 o’clock newscasts, has been a beacon of light for Denver’s and Colorado’s most impactful news stories over four decades. It is hard to imagine Denver television without her.
Still, while her longevity and its accompanying celebrity have made her one of the city’s and region’s most recognizable faces, Trujillo bristles at any adulation thrown her way.
“I think what you see is what you get,” said Trujillo in a recent phone chat. That is not false modesty. Though New Mexican by birth, Coloradan by choice, Trujillo said if she’s stopped in a grocery store or anywhere in Denver, the person you meet is who she is. “I’ve never been ‘showy.”
Trujillo, like so many in her line of work, began her journalism odyssey in ‘Cabbageville,’ a name commonly attached to places and markets known only by people in the business. In her case, ‘Cabbageville’ was Scottsbluff, Nebraska. For reference, Scottsbluff is America’s 2,429th largest city.
Trujillo was a senior at the University of Colorado when she heard about a TV job in the Nebraska town. A friend helped her put an audition tape together and in the mail it went. Within days, she got a callback inviting her to visit. “I drove out with my mom to check it out and he offered me a job on the spot,” she recalled. Not only did she take the $10,000 a year job but dropped out of CU to take it. “I quit school knowing I could go back if I didn’t like it.” Many years later, Trujillo did go back for her degree.
Luckily, despite her rookie mistakes—and there were plenty—she persevered. “I was terrible, and didn’t know what I was doing,” she confessed. To this day, her early TV days draw a smile…and an abundance of thanks to strangers, the audience that welcomed her into their homes. “The people of Scottsbluff were very forgiving and kind.”
In Scottsbluff, despite a few on-air pratfalls, she showed enough talent to get a call from Omaha six months into her Nebraska adventure. KMTV Omaha called offering her the noon anchor position. Her trial by fire, first in Scottsbluff and later Omaha, told her she had what it took to shoot for the stars. In this case, that meant coming home, back to Denver.
After a year in Omaha, she once again found herself looking. At the same time, Denver 7 was also looking. She got the offer. Her first day in September 1984 was memorable in so many ways.
“I was assigned to follow a crew,” that included Harry Smith, now a network correspondent, and a photographer named Mike. (For privacy purposes, his surname will be omitted.) Smith, who began his Denver media career as a KHOW disc jockey, went on to be a correspondent for CBS and later NBC. The photographer? Well, they married and today have two grown children. There’s also a pair of grandchildren. “They call me ‘Lita.’”
Asking Trujillo to name a story or two that stands out over the course of her four decades in Denver is no easy task. Afterall, in those many years, the city has entertained a Pope, hosted the national Democratic Convention, experienced Super Bowls, Stanley Cups and NBA championship and on and on. Governors and mayors have come and gone, and the city and region have grown exponentially. The Denver metro population has doubled over the last forty years to nearly three million. But one memory stands out above all. Trujillo says it “changed my life.”
The 1999 Columbine shooting, the bookmark for American gun tragedies, woke the country up to an era of violence that continues today. The Columbine High School massacre, undertaken by two students, claimed the lives of 13 students and one teacher.
As parents struggled to find a semblance of normalcy in an event that defied the norm, Trujillo said she found a comfort in comforting those Columbine parents who chose to share their loss, their stories with her. “That was a privilege for me,” she said. “Those kinds of situations meant so much to me…it was always an honor.”
While Trujillo has been appreciated by her Denver 7 audience for years, she has also earned affection, appreciation and respect across the landscape of Denver news.
“You realize stations are competing,” said 9News anchor Kim Christiansen. “But I viewed her as a colleague and have enormous respect for her. She has always been gracious, friendly and kind…a great journalist.” Christiansen, also one of Denver’s best-known TV faces, said Trujillo’s legacy has been a long-term benefit to the community. The trust the community has given Trujillo, said her TV counterpart “has been earned.”
Over the years, the landscape in television news has changed. Today, instead of having a bevy of White men in suits and ties covering The White House, Congress, world affairs, informing about institutions that have daily impact on our lives, there are women and people of color filling those roles. Newsrooms are well represented by the mosaic that is our country. But, said Trujillo, that’s only a start.
“I wish I could say that news stations were diverse enough,” she said. While not entirely absent, the places where decisions are made, where new direction is charted, in management, there isn’t nearly enough diversity, Trujillo said. “When you’re making decision that affect the whole community, you can’t leave 30 percent out of the process.”
Looking back, Trujillo said the transformation of delivering news has been meteoric. In Scottsbluff, she did it all—news, weather and sports—by herself or sometimes with a single colleague. That included changing ribbons on newsroom typewriters and the wire machine, a constant clickety-clack machine that kept the newsroom’s rhythm. The the age of computers has relegated it to history.
Trujillo said leaving the newsroom will be both bittersweet and time. The excitement and adrenalin rush of breaking news will be someone else’s. And that’s OK with her. She’s got a whole life to live with her family and especially her two grandchildren, two indispensable parts of life that she could have never imagined when she took exit 22 off Interstate 80 those many years ago.
It’s not the rearview mirror for Trujillo that has her attention. It’s the view out of the windshield and the road ahead.
