Rick Sanchez

Rick Sanchez
Sanchez at Jeff Pulver's 140 Characters Conference - June 2009
Born	July 3, 1958 (age 52) Guanabacoa, Cuba
Occupation	Anchor/Correspondent for CNN

Rick Sanchez profile,

Ricardo León "Rick" Sánchez de Reinaldo (born July 3, 1958) is a Cuban-American TV news anchor who hosts Rick's List on CNN from 3:00pm to 5:00pm (EST). In addition, he serves as a contributor to Anderson Cooper 360° and CNN International, where he frequently reports while simultaneously translating in English and Spanish. For eight months, in the interim between Paula Zahn and Campbell Brown, he anchored Out in the Open at 8 p.m. He has also filled in for Anderson Cooper and Ali Velshi on Your Money on occasion. Based in the network's world headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, Sanchez joined the network in September 2004.

Sanchez was involved in the network’s Peabody Award winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina. He anchored the network's coverage for eight hours as the levees broke in New Orleans, Louisiana, and began filing live reports from the flooding the next day. On January 18, 2010 he started a new show called Rick's List.

Personal life

Sanchez was born in Guanabacoa, Cuba. The son of Cuban political exiles who came to the United States in the 1950s from Cuba, Sanchez grew up in the city of Hialeah, Florida. He graduated from Hialeah High School in 1977 and accepted a football scholarship to Minnesota State University Moorhead. He transferred to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on a CBS/WCCO Journalism Scholarship in 1979.

He and his wife, Suzanne (also a Miami native), have four children - three boys and a girl, Ricky Jr., Robby, Remmy, and Savannah.

Career

Sanchez began his broadcasting career at KCMT in Alexandria, Minnesota, while still in college. He was hired at WSVN (formerly WCKT) in Miami, Florida in 1982 and became a weekend anchor shortly thereafter; at 22, he was the youngest television anchor in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale TV market at the time.[citation needed] He then worked briefly for KHOU in Houston, Texas before returning to an afternoon anchor position with WSVN. Sanchez was hired at MSNBC in 2001.

In 2003, Sanchez left MSNBC to return to the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale TV market. While there, he hosted a local talk show on WTVJ helmed by executive producer Fran Mires. Sanchez later anchored on then-WB affiliated WBZL (now WSFL) until he joined CNN in 2004.

Sanchez has reported on major events across the United States and around the world, including on-the-scene coverage of Hurricane Andrew and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Sanchez has also reported on wars in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, the invasion of Grenada and the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier's regime in Haiti.

His style has been parodied by Saturday Night Live (NBC) and The Daily Show.

Sanchez currently hosts two hours of live news coverage on CNN, during which viewer comments about the day's news stories from MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter are displayed both on large plasma screens in the studio and scrolling at the bottom of the screen. Sanchez's use of social networking tools to create a citizen-driven news program has generated mostly positive feedback.

Controversy

On December 10, 1990, Sanchez struck a drunken pedestrian, Jeffrey Smuzinick, with his car on a residential street near Dolphin Stadium, then known as Joe Robbie Stadium, and left the scene, returning two hours later.[3] Smuzinick was paralyzed and eventually died in an assisted living facility on November 2, 1995. Sanchez had just left an NFL football game with his father when the accident occurred, and a police breathalyzer exam determined that Sanchez' own blood alcohol level was above the legal limit for driving. He was not charged with causing the accident, but was charged with and pleaded no contest to DUI.

Highlights

He attended Mae M. Walters Elementary School in Hialeah, Florida

He attended Henry H. Filer Middle School in Hialeah, Florida

He worked as a delivery truck loader and as a City of Hialeah Parks and Recreation youth mentor

He won an Emmy Award for a series titled "Cuando salí de Cuba" (When I left Cuba), documenting how Cubans changed the face of Miami.

(source:wikipedia)