For many who watch local news in the Denver metro area, Anne Trujillo has become a familiar household presence as a longtime news anchor with the Denver7 news station.
Her confident voice and smile have filled local kitchens and living rooms across the region, as families catch up on the day’s top stories during the evening news cycle and before bedtime.
After 39 years, Trujillo’s common presence will soon change as she is set to officially sign off for the last time this month.
As she turns the page to her next adventure, the Littleton resident says she plans to spend more time with family and figure out her next big thing.
As opposed to saying she is “retiring,” Trujillo said she thinks of her next step as “renovating,” an idea she said she adopted from Chilean writer Isabel Allende.
“I just feel like it’s time for a change,” she said. “ I just feel like there’s so much more I want to do — and I can’t even tell you what that is specifically … I just know that there are other things out there that I feel like I am young enough and capable enough to take on.”
Becoming a broadcaster
Trujillo was born in Santa Fe and spent some of her childhood in Los Angeles before her family moved to Littleton when she was in sixth grade.
She attended East Elementary School, Euclid Middle School and graduated from Littleton High School.
As an avid reader, Trujillo always loved her English and literature classes growing up. Her first job — running errands at the Littleton Independent — foreshadowed her career in journalism, although she said she never really considered it as a kid.
The first-generation college student started out as a business major, but decided to take an introduction to journalism class.
After that, everything started to fall into place.
“The more I took journalism classes, the more I kept going in that direction,” Trujillo said. “It just kinda happened.”
She started at Mesa College in Grand Junction and then went to the University of Colorado-Boulder. During college, she worked at a Spanish radio station with her mother, she said.
When she was a senior, a friend told her about a broadcast job opening in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
Although she hadn’t considered broadcast, Trujillo took the advice of several women in the news industry who told her to pause her college career to take the job.
In Scottbluff, on a team of only two newscasters, Trujillo was reading, shooting stories, writing newscasts, conducting interviews and hosting the show.
“(I) didn’t know what on earth I was doing,” she said. “It was a great challenge and I figured out very quickly that I liked it.”
After six months, she was hired by a station in Omaha. She continued building her skills and then returned to Colorado, where she started working at Denver7 as a general assignment reporter in 1984.
She moved up in the company, covering major news stories including the Columbine and Aurora theater shootings, the Democratic National Convention in Denver and three Broncos’ Super Bowl appearances, according to the Denver7 website.
While working at Denver7, Trujillo completed her credits to officially graduate from CU Boulder in 2011.
Creating a more diverse industry
Over the course of her career, Trujillo has been a role model and a mentor to other journalists, specifically working to make the TV news industry more inclusive for women and people of color.
“I think for me, I just felt like I never had that,” she said.
Being a woman — and more specifically, a woman of color — was a rarity when Trujillo first started working in the industry.
Initially, Trujillo said she was often assigned to cover education stories and stories related to children. The stations rarely covered communities of color.
As time went on and she became more rooted in her role, Trujillo said she made an effort to make connections with people like her because she remembers wondering if she belonged.
She also started to see her impact on viewers who saw themselves in her.
“I know how important it is to have representation within my industry,” she said. “The longer I stayed, the more I knew how valuable it was … I mean, it’s funny when I think back, I guess what I would say is that I normalized having a brown-skinned woman with a Spanish surname on local news.”
Over the course of her career, Trujillo dedicated her time to mentorship and leadership through the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the advisory counsel to CU Boulder’s journalism department.
When Trujillo left her job in Omaha, a coworker left her a note that included a message about hope for more women in the TV news industry someday.
“We’ve come a long way,” Trujillo said, reflecting on how the industry has changed since then.
Trujillo has also served on the board of the Denver Scholarship Foundation, which helps Denver high schoolers take the next steps in their education. She also worked with There with Care, a nonprofit that helps families under the stress of a medical crisis.
Love and learning
When asked what her proudest accomplishment or biggest takeaway from her time at Denver7 was, Trujillo did not mention her Emmy awards or the long list of recognitions she has earned from groups including the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences, the Colorado Broadcasters Association, The Associated Press, Women in Communications or the Latino Leadership Institute.
Instead, she spoke of something more personal.
“I met my husband there,” she said. “First day on the job.”
She was assigned to work with Mike Kalush, a news photographer, on her first day. Decades later, they have two children and two grandchildren.
“I feel like that was just my destiny,” she said.
Trujillo, who is still an enthusiastic reader, said she also loved how much she got to learn through her work as a news anchor.
“I love that I learn new and different things every day, whether it’s a person who existed, a law that existed, a community (where) I didn’t know there was this cool little park or whatever it is,” she said. “I just have such an affinity for Colorado, having grown up here, and I just love when I know about new and different, little, special places that are not always so well-known.”
As she leaves her role at Denver7, she said she wants her viewers to know how much their trust has meant to her.
“I have loved every minute of my job and I am humbled that people have felt trust in me — honestly, I get choked up thinking about that,” she said, tears starting to form in her eyes.
When she posted about her decision to leave Denver7 on Facebook, over 500 people commented, expressing how they would miss her work ethic, integrity, compassion and dedication to diversity.
“It warms my heart that it was meaningful to me, but also meaningful to to viewers,” she said.
Trujillo and Kalush still live in Littleton, where they have a vegetable garden and quite a few Harry Potter-themed decorations.
The couple likes to visit downtown Littleton and attend community events, such as concerts.
Trujillo’s last day at Denver7 is Nov. 16.
Although viewers won’t be able to see Trujillo on their television screens anymore, she said she’s not going anywhere far.
“We’re staying in Littleton,” Trujillo said. “There’s no leaving. I just feel at home here.”
A woman of grace and purpose, a true professional with a heart. Thank you, Anne Trujillo, for your years of service to the people of Colorado. I will personally miss your voice, your smile, and your careful balance of caring and sharing news that matters. Judy P.