Hazel Sanchez joins PIX11’s Morning News

Morning News anchors Dan Mannarino and Sanchez: ‘This is my home. I know New York.’ PIX11 photo

Award-winning veteran journalist Hazel Sanchez has joined the WPIX-TV (PIX11) television station starting September 20. She is now co-anchor of the Morning News alongside PIX11’s Dan Mannarino. 

Since 2000, Sanchez has served as an anchor and reporter for WCBS-TV, covering breaking news, politics, city government, crime and a wide variety of features and human interest stories regarding life in the five boroughs and all of their unique neighborhoods.  She has become a trusted presence on the streets of New York City, well-known for her fairness, compassion and understanding of the major issues that most concern New Yorkers, according to a statement from the station.

“From Brooklyn to Queens to Staten Island, over the course of two decades in this market I have established strong relationships with business leaders, with an array of city, state, and federal politicians, and with community groups,” said Sanchez. “This is my home. I know New York, and I know the issues and concerns that matter most to New Yorkers.     

In announcing Sanchez’s move to PIX11, News Director Nicole Tindiglia commented, “I have worked with Hazel in many capacities over the past two decades and I have always been impressed by her professionalism, sensitivity and thoroughness—she has always been a genuine pleasure to work with and a collaborator in every sense of the word.”  

Hazel said, “I’m very excited to join the PIX11 morning news team. I love the energy everyone brings to the show and I’m looking forward to helping viewers start their day with news that’s important to them from around the world and here at home.”

Sanchez  (2nd from left) was named one of three Distinguished Filipino Women by the Philippine Consulate in 2018. From left, IBM Engineer Virginia Policarpio, Penguin publisher Elda Rotor, and then-Consul General Tess Dizon-De Vega. Photo by Lambert Parong

A proud Filipino American, Sanchez was named one of the “Top 100 Most Influential Filipinas in the U.S.” by the Filipina Women’s Network in 2009. In 2017, she received The Outstanding Filipinos in America Award (TOFA). In 2020 TOFA named her one of the Top 100 Most Influential Filipino Americans. 

In 2018, she was honored by the Philippine Consulate as one of three Distinguished Filipino Women for that year, together with IBM Engineer Virginia Policarpio and Penguin publisher Elda Rotor.

Sanchez said she was proud of her Filipino roots. Prouder still of her parents who worked diligently and made the ultimate sacrifice. Her parents — father Manuel Sanchez is an anesthesiologist, and her mother, Carlota Sanchez, a nurse — left behind Hazel’s two older sisters when they were babies when they moved to the U.S. When they were able to save enough money, they gathered everyone and made a life in Illinois.

“Mom and dad both came from purely nothing. But they looked past the challenges of poverty and they focused” on providing their children with good education, she said.

She graduated with a B.A. in broadcasting and electronic communications from Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. Her first job after college was a news cut-in anchor for a Milwaukee station. She would later join WBAY-TV Green Bay, hosting “Teen Connection,” a live, hour-long show for Wisconsin Public Television. She also hosted a number of the station’s award-winning documentaries. She joined WCBS in 2000.

“I wanted to be a broadcast journalist,” she told the consulate audience. “That’s literally what I wrote in my grade school journal. I was just 10 years old, and that was my life goal before I even hit puberty.”

Sanchez and her husband live in Manhattan with their two daughters Avery, 8, and Kenzie, 6.

© The FilAm 2021



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