COD alumna Kristin Crowley finds success as Rockford news anchor

Kristin Crowley is an award-winning investigative reporter and evening news anchor for the NBC Rockford affiliate WREX-13.

All of which seems odd for the Downers Grove native, since she didn't plan on a career in TV news while earning her general education credits at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn.

"I wanted to be a lawyer. So many of my family members were lawyers," she said. "But my soccer coach, Mike Losacco, he said, 'You don't want to be a lawyer. You would be a terrible lawyer.'"

Losacco said Crowley instead reminded him of CBS Chicago investigative journalist Dave Savini.

That wasn't necessarily a ringing endorsement for Crowley.

"I knew of Dave Savini because he had come to my high school and had done a talk," Crowley said. "I thought, I would never want to be a TV reporter. It sounds awful because he talked about all this work he put into it, and how it could take months for a story, and he just gets three minutes of airtime."

Nevertheless, Crowley found that she enjoyed learning about journalism and aimed to become a newspaper reporter.

"Kristin was always a highly motivated student," said Sandy Fries, a professor and program chair for mass communication and journalism at COD. "I remember her sitting in my office asking for career advice, always 100% focused, always 100% energetic."

Crowley was unable to find a newspaper job after graduating from COD, but a college internship with the Chicago radio station KISS-FM provided the connections she need to be hired as a morning news producer at the age of 19.

When she later enrolled at Columbia College Chicago, television contacts she had cultivated while at KISS-FM led to an internship with Chicago ABC affiliate WLS-TV channel 7. A production assistant job followed at WFLD FOX Chicago.

"I told myself that I had better start focusing on television because that's where the doors keep opening," Crowley said.

Subsequent TV news jobs took her to Lafayette, Indiana, and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Crowley and her eventual husband, news producer Josh Morgan, both received three-year job offers from WREX-13 in 2013. Crowley admits she was apprehensive about the move.

"Growing up in Downers Grove, we had only heard of Rockford as this dangerous place," Crowley said. "But three years came and went and we decided that we really liked it, and that there was a lot more to Rockford."

Crowley also started garnering accolades for her work. In 2015, she won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting. The next year, she won a regional Emmy Award as part of a team for "Outstanding Achievement for News Programming - Morning Newscast."

Crowley has shared many tragic news stories as a WREX-13 anchor. In October 2018, she nearly became the subject of one herself.

"I was on my way to work, and my car lost control on the road where there was construction and patches of gravel," she said. "And my car started skidding like it hit ice and I was fishtailing and went out of control, hitting a tree going about 60 miles an hour."

Crowley suffered breaks to a vertebrae, her tailbone and three bones in her right ankle that required major surgery. She couldn't work for a month and couldn't drive for six months while undergoing physical therapy.

Crowley said she still feels pain in her back and her ankle doesn't have its full range of motion.

"I'd say I'm about 95%," Crowley said. "But I'm lucky to be alive."

Crowley and her husband, who recently was promoted as the station's general manager and vice president, have both become big boosters of WREX-13 and Rockford. Once the pandemic is over, she wants everyone to visit her adopted hometown.

"I can't tell you how much I love my job and what I do," Crowley said. "My husband and I have both been very happy here and we're looking forward to whatever the future brings."