Brigham Young University graduate Amy Westerby has gifts in acting and in journalism.
When she's acting, things seem to go along pretty well.Every time she's on a big story, she has nothing but obstacles appear in her way.
So, guess which one she's chosen as a career?
"I don't know. As far as my life goes, I don't have problems, but usually when I'm trying to get a story, something goes wrong," said the newest winner of a $5,000 Hearst Foundation grand prize for television news reporting.
Westerby said her tale of getting the story together for the second round of competition for the Hearst prize reads something like a bad news saga. She won the first round by submitting clips from working at BYU.
First, her photographer did not bring transportation. It was assumed each of the three photographers would provide a car for their competition team.
Amy was left afoot, in high heels, on the beaches of San Francisco to get a story on Presidio Park.
She didn't have a working lap-top computer when she returned to file her award-winning story and then the editing equipment she was assigned, failed.
It was truly one of those days when "if something can go wrong, it will" proved to be the theme.
"Everything went wrong," said Westerby, from her Orlando, Fla., home where she is looking for work and living with her husband, Will Swenson.
Swenson is playing Gaston in the Beauty and the Beast production at Disney World.
Westerby is actually using footage from what started as some of her biggest disasters in her resume for a job.
"One time I was getting a story in Provo in February and it was snowing. We realized we had no tape for the photographer so I ran back to get some. I ran out of gas. It spilled all over me. I had missed the story by the time I got back. Fortunately, the photographer had come up with a tape and shot enough that I could get the story. I ended up putting it on my resume tape."
For the Presidio Park story, Westerby and her photographer - after being dropped off at the beach by one of the competition teams - trudged along until she noticed a large group of people "on their knees" in the sand.
A park ranger told her they were an LDS ward out helping to weed the park, and Westerby capitalized on the group's efforts for her story.
"I packaged my whole story around them," said Westerby, "and I guess they (the judges) liked it."
She beat out an experienced producer and reporter from Phoenix and a student from the University of South Carolina.
That was even though her frustrations didn't end at the park. Westerby actually ended up borrowing a computer and editing equipment from an employee at San Francisco University to finish her piece.
"I was so glad to be done when we finally turned in our stories," said Westerby. "I was really surprised to win."
Hearst Foundation spokes-people say Westerby has a great future in broadcasting. She is a graduate of Brigham Young University and has been working in Pocatello, Ida., as a news anchor for KPVI.
She has no intention of letting a little opposition discourage her.
"I think choosing broadcasting as a career, well, it's making me tougher," she said.