A shy, quiet student at the School of Journalism and Communication, she felt more comfortable behind the scenes than front and center. She studied writing and public relations and thought she might become a newspaper reporter or a magazine writer. "There was so much competition in broadcasting," she says. "And I just thought there was no way I could get up there in front of people."

When she moved to Lawton, Okla., a few years after graduating, she took a job running studio cameras at the local television station, KSWO. The energy of the newsroom soon got into her blood. Eventually, she was persuaded to step in front of the camera, and once she was there, she never left.

Now the news anchor for KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, Carr spends much of her life on television. She's covered nearly every major news event of the past decade: She reported from Littleton, Colo., after the tragic school shootings there. She covered the Alaska Airlines crash off the coast of Los Angeles. And she was on the air on Sept. 11, reporting on the tragedy as thousands of viewers tuned in.

"This is not a nine-to-five job," says Carr. "When you're on vacation and the news breaks, you come home. When you're asleep and the news breaks, you get up and go to work."

But bringing important news to the community makes the taxing schedule worthwhile, according to Carr.

"Credibility and respect of a community is not something bestowed upon you because you sit behind an anchor desk," she says. "You have to earn it, but when you do and people turn to you for information in times of crisis, it's an amazing feeling of serving something greater than yourself, and it is the greatest gift of my job."

She returned from a vacation in Italy last month, only to turn around two weeks later and fly to Rome to cover the U.S. Cardinals' meeting with Pope John Paul II. Once there, she reported from the roof of a convent just outside the Vatican wall. As she broadcast the story, she had the feeling that she was serving as a witness to history.

"I think all of us there had the sense that this was the beginning of a massive public outcry that would ultimately force change in the church," she says.

Carr also covers events she says feel more like fun than work, including the Nagano Olympics in 1998, and the Emmy and Grammy Awards. She once broke her leg while reporting on the Army's Golden Knight skydiving team.

Professor Duncan McDonald, who taught Carr, says her quiet manner reminded him of another of his students—NBC news reporter Ann Curry, who graduated in 1978. "Gretchen was unsure what direction she wanted to take, but she was armed with a quiet confidence," says McDonald. "She's in a tough business, and her success is not surprising to me at all."

Carr wasn't sure what she wanted to study until she took a class with Duncan McDonald. She liked it so much that she decided to major in journalism. On her desk at KCBS, Carr keeps a tattered copy of When Words Collide, the grammar text written by McDonald and another of her professors, Lauren Kessler. "It's well-traveled and tearing at its binding these days, but it is among my desktop bibles that I have carried throughout the years."

Her advice to today's journalism students? Read as much as possible. "Expose yourself and your mind to a tapestry of ideas, thoughts, lifestyles and cultures. Bring a broad perspective to this career. Your audience will have one," she says.

"Though the world of news is changing and not everything you see...these days qualifies as news, this is still among the noblest of professions for people who find their passion in unearthing the truth."