Helene Duhamel signed off from Rapid City, South Dakota ABC affiliate KOTA last week.
“This is so hard, gut-wrenchingly difficult,” Duhamel told the Rapid City Journal. “I hate to leave something that has been in the family for so many years that my grandmother started, walking in her footsteps to a very small degree.”
Duhamel’s grandmother founded the station in 1955. The Duhamel family sold the station to Schurz Communications three years ago. Gray bought it from Schurz last year.
She’s taking a new job as Public Information Officer for the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office.
Her station bio says she started as a part-time reporter and summer intern while still in college. She started working as a full-time reporter at the station after graduating from Stanford.
She left in 1988 to work as news director at KOTA satellite station KDUH in Scottsbluff, Neb. One year later, she came back to KOTA as the corporate news director and anchor.