KUSA anchor Vicente Arenas recently opened up to The Denver Post about why he took the job at the Denver NBC affiliate and how a dump truck inspired him to go to college.
Arenas joined KUSA in February after working for two years as a CBS News correspondent.
He told The Denver Post’s Joanne Ostrow he took the job because of its “great storytelling culture” and talked about being “the aberration in the family” since he’s the only one in his extended family to attend college.
“I grew up in the barrio,” Arenas said. “I didn’t know until later that kids like me weren’t supposed to make it.”
When he was 5 or 6, he said, his uncle would take him to work with him at 4 a.m., spraying for mosquitoes, filling potholes.
“I’d play in the trash,” Arenas said.
A chunky kid wearing “husky pants from Sears,” he assumed he would follow in his 400-pound uncle’s path. His uncle advised him it would be “easier to pick up a pencil than a shovel,” and that if he didn’t want to end up driving a dump truck, he should go to college.