KIMT

Her first job out of school was as a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines, but she never lost sight of her dream.

In 1993, she joined KIMTTV in Mason City, a CBS affiliate, anchoring the morning show and the noon news.

Her two-year contract was due to expire in the fall of 1995, and by all accounts, she was thinking about bigger markets.

The morning anchor's job at a small market station is brutal.

We're in Mason City, Iowa, a town of about 30,000 people, up flat farm country near the Minnesota line.

At the CBS affiliate KIMT, the morning newscast, Daybreak, is a couple of hours from air, and the anchor is not there yet.

Her name is Jodi Wiesentrub.

She's 27, small-town Minnesota golf star who worked her way up through local television.

6 a.m. came, and Jodi was still not at the station.

So Amy Koons slid over and anchored Daybreak herself.

KIMT staffer called the Mason City police at 7.13 that morning and and officers were at her apartment three minutes later.

In the parking lot, about a dozen steps from Jodi's own front door, they found her red Mazda Miata still sitting there.

So this case starts 3:00 AM on Tuesday, June 27th, 1995 in Mason City, Iowa.

Most people at the time are sound asleep, but not the morning news crew at KIMT TV.

Down at the local station, they're hard at work rushing to prepare for the 6:00 AM broadcast, and as they write scripts and they light the set, they're all glancing at the door because they're waiting for one person to arrive, and that's their anchor, 27-year-old Jodi Huisentruit.

It's pretty common for her to oversleep and be a little bit late for her 3:00 AM call time, but they always work around it.