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Ann Curry was sitting in for Katie Couric on NBC's Today in 2004 when the tsunami hit south Asia two days after Christmas.
"I was going crazy during those five days because there was no way I could leave," Curry, 49, recalled last week from Lebanon, where she has been reporting on refugees as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies.
"Every day I was on the phone. 'We've got to go! Send somebody!'" Curry's lobbying ended when NBC sent her to Sri Lanka, where she reported on the thousands of people who were killed, injured or displaced by the giant wave.
Pick your humanitarian crisis -- whether it's war in the Middle East, starvation in Africa, an earthquake in Pakistan or Hurricane Katrina -- and chances are good that Curry, who reads the news on Today and co-anchors Dateline, will be there.
"If I can make Americans care enough to watch and be moved by it and maybe even do something to contribute, to care, to open up their hearts, then that's my job," Curry says. "This is why I became a reporter. This is who I really am, and this is how at the end of my days I want to be judged."
If this sounds somewhat syrupy and too earnest, then you don't know the real Ann Curry, says Today weatherman Al Roker, a longtime friend.
"There may be those in the industry who question it, but the viewers love her and they know that it's real," Roker says. "People at home get it.
As for her sincerity, "It is not fake. She is passionate. Of course, Ann also gets that way about her pasta puttanesca," Roker quips.
Network news analyst Andrew Tyndall says that although Curry's reporting might be faulted for tugging at people's heartstrings more than looking at the roots of crises, "you've got to give her chops for extracting money from NBC News' budget to send her to all these places."
Last week, Curry reported from a former Lebanese prison now being used to house some of the estimated 700,000 Lebanese who have been displaced by the bombings. Today, she begins reporting from Israel on how the war is affecting people there.
Curry says that her interest in humanitarian reporting began in local news in Los Angeles, where she reported on the homeless. But on the network level, it began in 1999 when she badgered then-Today producer Jeff Zucker to send her to Kosovo to report on the atrocities there.
Curry's ability to "put a human face" on stories of human suffering sets her apart, says Zucker, now head of NBC Universal TV.
Ever since Kosovo, "she is the first to hold up her hand and say, 'Send me there, boss,'" says NBC News president Steve Capus, who sent her to Louisiana to report on the people displaced by Katrina last year and to Darfur this year to report on starvation there.
When Curry's stories on Darfur aired on Today, NBC News research showed viewership increased. Talking to Angelina Jolie in Namibia may have helped push ratings, which is fine with Curry. "I'm able to bring more attention to suffering because people like her are talking about it."
At one time, Curry was considered a probable successor to Couric on Today. But in September, as Couric begins as anchor on The CBS Evening News, ABC's Meredith Vieira will take Couric's former seat next to Matt Lauer.
That's fine with Curry.
"The thing I have really come to see is that I couldn't do the job that I really love, the stuff that I'm talking about, if I did have that job, because there's no way I would be able to leave the chair," she says. "At my core, I am a hard-news reporter."
E-mail pjohnson @usatoday.com
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