NEW ORLEANS — CBS’s Morning Show featured former WWL-TV Anchor Karen Swensen and the journey that has led her to walk away from a career in TV news while still at the top of her game to focus on a venture that looks to give people who have experienced loss or hardship a second chance.
The story by David Begnaud focused not only on Karen’s business, Life’s About Change, but detailed her personal battles and her resilience.
Shortly before she was married in the early 2000s, Karen found out that she had a benign tumor that would likely cost her the chance to have children.
Through medical advances, Karen was able to achieve that goal with her husband John Ronquillo, a veteran and well-liked New Orleans police officer. They had a daughter -- who just started college this past school year.
Then in 2005 she went through the trauma of Hurricane Katrina, reporting from New Orleans despite her young daughter having been evacuated and her husband serving the public at the Superdome where human despair was on display.
She forged forward despite limited communication with either her daughter or husband and, like many in New Orleans, she lost her family’s home.
She said those challenges changed her, and not for the better.
“I went down this rabbit hole for, really, years, just missing the house we had lost, the friends we had lost, the way of life we had lost.”
Karen and her family moved to Boston where she became an anchor on a station’s morning show, but the lure of New Orleans brought her back to WWL-TV in 2011. Her elation of their return soon changed.
Six months after arriving here, John was diagnosed with advanced cancer. Her daughter was only 9-years-old.
He lived another six years, much longer than had been forecast. Through it all, she forged ahead, inspired in many ways by some of the subjects of her stories, people who had lost loved ones or battled addictions. It’s those types of people that she still counts among her closest friends and they are the types of employees she seeks in her company that produces t-shirts and candles with positive, life-affirming messages.
“Always look for the positive or at least try to be in a state of joy,” she told Begnaud. “When my husband was sick, I looked for the person who beat it. When he passed, I looked for the widow who was still smiling.”
Karen had one more scare and a twist of fate that ultimately may have saved her life.
Last year she suffered appendicitis and after her recovery, she said she looked at the pathology reports and found that she had a carcinoma, the most common form of cancer.
“They said that type of cancer is so insidious that by the time you usually find it, it’s over… A twist of fate that saved my life.”
And a twist that may have helped push her to leave television news to dedicate her full attention to her company, teaching people how to handle change, no matter how hard it may be with a company giving people a second chance.
“I’m not leaving New Orleans. I’m just pivoting. Life is about change, so it is about time I live up to that mantra.”