Saying Goodbye To KCAL9 Anchor Sylvia Lopez

STUDIO CITY (CBSLA.com) — After three decades spent at L.A.'s top-ranking news stations, KCAL9 anchor Sylvia Lopez is synonymous with award-winning journalism.

So it may come as a surprise that she's leaving the anchor desk to start a new chapter, as a graduate student in health policy at Cal State Northridge.

But before CBS2 and KCAL9 say goodbye to the beloved anchor, we felt it important to take a look back at her remarkable career.

It began in 1983, when Lopez realized she wanted to be a reporter while studying at USC.

She got her start at CBS2 working as an intern and production assistant and assembling her resume tape.

"Right away, the people in the newsroom took me under their wing and treated me like their little sister, and they started showing me around," Lopez reminisced. "And I got the bug, that's when I got the bug."

"I was just this really naive kid who didn't really know much abut the news. And the whole thing was kind of scary and wondrous to me."

Her resume tape landed Lopez her first reporting job in New Mexico, where she worked for a year before returning to L.A. to report at KCOP in the mid-80s.

Two years later, Lopez was hired at the station where she first fell in love with news. She began work in 1988 as a reporter for CBS2.

The station told her, "'Hey, we know you used to work here as an intern and production assistant, we remember you, you're part of our family. We'd like to consider you to come back.'"

The news business would become Lopez's passport to the world. For three weeks, she traveled with CBS2 crews from Northern Mexico to the very southern tip of the country, on the border of Guatemala, gathering stories: "We brought it back and put it into a one-hour special. And one of the stories that we told, somehow we found a woman that was living in a cave. She was a cave dweller."

She covered local stories from the field and from the anchor chair.

And it was at CBS2 that she met her husband, Joe: "It was sort of love at first sight. I saw him, he was a per diem writer, and I just thought, 'Who is that guy?'"

They married in 1989.

When Lopez heard that KHJ was going to become KCAL9, she declined their offer to join their news team.

She explained her thinking at the time: "Prime time news for three hours. Now, that's not going to last very long. And, of course, we all know what happened. It was enormously successful and so, two years later, when they asked me if I'd be interested I said 'yes.'"

Lopez joined KCAL9 in 1992 and covered it all, from the Landers earthquake to the L.A. Riots.

"You have to maintain your cool because what you're seeing is complete and utter devastation," Lopez reported while covering an explosion in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Lopez says one of her highlights was co-anchoring with L.A. news legend Jerry Dunphy: "He just loved the written world and loved crafting a really good sentence. And we would sit and debate over the proper usage of words. And it was very special to have worked with him in his final two years."

She's gone on to share the anchor desk with many familiar faces throughout the years. When KCAL9 and CBS2 merged in 2002, she reported for both stations on significant stories from across the country and around the world, including Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Cologne, Germany.

The L.A. community has also gotten to know Lopez for her efforts supporting the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure: "Been there on race day...for 15 years. And they've become more like family to me than anything else."

She's also raised a family of her own.

She said, "There's no way to put into words how challenging it is to be a woman and to work in this industry. I think about all those reporters out there that have kids waiting for them at home. It's a tough juggle, a really tough juggle, and they do it so well."

Her peers say another thing that sets Lopez apart is her humility.

"It's such a team effort, and anything I do would not be possible without the photographer, the editor and the producer. So we, as a team, have won a few Emmys and a few Golden Mics. And I've been so lucky to be a part of that time, really lucky," she said.

It's her passion for storytelling over the past 30 years that's earned her the admiration of so many Southern Californians and her colleagues in the news business.

"I will always have an amazingly special memory and fondness for the years that I spent in this industry, the station and that opportunities that I had. I will never, ever forget that. And I will always hold them very, very close to my heart," Lopez said.

Reflecting on it all, she's grateful for what she's experience first-hand: "You get the sense that you're seeing history in the making and you get a front-row seat, and that's been amazing."