KKTV anchor Lindsey Boetsch on going viral with Bill Murray, the best/worst parts of her job and the importance of organ donation | Q&A
New KKTV evening anchor and Illinois native Lindsey Boetsch was greeted with a major snowstorm on her first week on the job. Welcome to Colorado!
To get to know Boetsch better, I asked a few simple questions.
Question: When did you know you wanted to be a broadcaster?
Answer: I knew I wanted to be a journalist in college. I went to school originally for optometry, and that didn’t work out. Then I wanted to be a meteorologist, but the school I was at didn’t have a meteorology program so I went into communications. Thankfully, the school I went to, Illinois State University, had an outstanding broadcast journalism program, and I just fell in love with it.
I still had an interest in weather so I was going to go to meteorology school after I graduated, but I got the opportunity to take a job in a small market doing weekend weather and producing during the week. I knew I couldn’t turn it down.
Lindsey Boetsch with Bill Murray
Q: What’s the best part of your job? The worst?
A: I love being able to meet people and hear their stories and share their stories. Everyone is just so unique, and I love that. I also really enjoy being able to be the one who people turn to when important information needs to get out. It’s a huge responsibility, and I don’t take it lightly. The worst part of my job is seeing people hurting. There are some pretty terrible things we have to report on. On a lighter note, I hate doing my makeup.
Q: What has been one of your strangest or funniest moments while on the job?
A: One of the funniest moments — well, probably most embarrassing — was in Jacksonville, Fla. We had a cold snap where it was in the 20s. We had this company come make a sledding hill at the station with man-made snow. My hand got caught on the hill on the way down and I did a full flip over and down the hill. We all had a good laugh.
Q: What are some things you’ve done to pass the time during the coronavirus?
A: When coronavirus hit, my daughter was 5 months old. She has kept my husband and me very busy. We also really enjoy getting outside so whenever the weather is nice, we try to go for a hike on one of Colorado’s incredible trails. We also have been cooking a lot more at home, including meal prepping every week. Now that I work nightside, we do lunches and dinners for every day of the week.
Q: Who are your heroes in real life?
A: My No. 1 hero is a woman I’ve never met. Her name was Kennya Gonzalez Ojeda. She died on Thanksgiving 2017 in a tragic car accident in Cape Coral, Fla. She was 32 years old when she was hit by a man who went into the median of a road and crashed into her vehicle head on.
Because of her, my dad is still alive today. She was an organ donor, and my dad received her right lung. He was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2013 and was given three to five years to live. By November 2017, he was struggling to have a conversation and struggling to breathe. He got a call a few days later that doctors had a lung for him, and he had a successful transplant.
Since then, he was able to give my now-husband permission to marry me, walk me down the aisle and met his fifth grandchild, who was born in October 2019.
Because my dad’s life was saved by the selfless gift of organ donation, I have done several stories on its importance and the impact it has in a person’s life.
Q: Is there a time you were completely starstruck?
A: I wouldn’t necessarily say I was starstruck, but probably the coolest person I’ve ever met is Bill Murray. I met him two years in a row at a golf tournament in Florida that his brothers put on every year. The first year, he and I took a picture together that went viral. He was wearing a pair of sweet Pabst Blue Ribbon shorts that everybody loved. The picture was on the cover of E! News’ website, Bleacher Report, USA Today and various other sites. It was pretty cool.
Gazette TV critic Terry Terrones is a member of the Television Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. You can follow him on Twitter at @terryterrones.
“I … really enjoy being able to be the one who people turn to when important information needs to get out,” says new KKTV evening anchor Lindsey Boetsch.