Sheba Turk on leaving WWL-TV for L.A.: 'You're always going to wonder, What if?' (2024)

Sheba Turk’s father, John, died of lung cancer three years ago. He was only 64 and still working for Amtrak.

“He was my best friend,” Turk said this week. “We were super close. I’ve had a really hard time dealing with his loss.

“Part of it has been he had so many dreams, so much stuff he didn’t get to do. He died without retiring. Literally on his deathbed, I remember him being like, ‘I’m going to start that restaurant I always wanted to start.’”

As co-anchor of WWL-TV’s popular “Eyewitness Morning News,” Turk had a good, high-profile, hometown job that she loved. During her decade at the station, she’d never really sought other opportunities.

But her father’s death got her thinking. Thinking about life’s “what ifs.” Thinking about whether there was something else out there for her.

Turns out, there was.

Friday is her last day at WWL. Next week, she and Samson, her 11-year-old pit bull mix, and Zora, a German shepherd who’s not quite 2, commence their new life in California.

On Jan. 9, she starts work at the CBS-owned KCAL-TV in Los Angeles, one of only two cities, along with New York, for which she was willing to leave New Orleans.

She’ll co-anchor KCAL’s morning show on weekends and report stories three days a week.

With her New Orleans departure fast approaching, she still wasn’t sure which of her two brothers, Jye or Jaron, would make the cross-country drive with her.

But she was sure about the decision to go.

“At the end of the day, the only person I have to answer to is myself. And myself, louder and louder, kept saying, ‘You’re always going to wonder, What if...?'"

From failure to fresh opportunity

Sheba Turk is not shy on social media. She frequently posts pictures of herself from fabulous locations in fabulous outfits.

But the path to those places was not necessarily the path she sought.

“A lot of people think I’m living my dream. It is a dream life, but it actually was not mine. You can’t dream of something you haven’t even been exposed to.”

At Dominican High School, she was devoted to the drama club. “It was life. That was all I did.”

She spent the 2005-06 school year in Houston for her family’s Hurricane Katrina exile. She returned to Dominican for her senior year and starred as Mrs. Meers in the musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

With sky-high ambitions, she enrolled in New York University. A “super nerd,” she did well in class but couldn’t afford tuition. Saddled with debt, she dropped out and returned to New Orleans, defeated.

“It was such a dark time,” she said. “There was a point that I really thought I was just going to be a college dropout and that no matter how hard I worked, I’m not going to get where I want to be.

“I thought it was failure, coming back home. And then I got home and things fell into place like dominoes.”

Getting a shot at WWL

She enrolled at the University of New Orleans, where scraping together tuition was still a challenge. She loved to write but didn’t see that as a career option.

At UNO, she took a class taught by Kim Bondy, a former CNN vice president and NBC News producer. Bondy suggested she consider a career in journalism, specifically broadcast journalism.

“If it wasn’t for her,” Turk said, “I wouldn’t have pursued this.”

Bondy had worked with celebrity TV journalist Soledad O’Brien. When O’Brien guest-lectured to her class, Bondy made sure to introduce her star pupil. O’Brien became a mentor to Turk; her foundation helped pay her tuition.

After graduation, in September 2011, WWL hired Turk as an overnight shift writer. Hoping to transition to on-air reporting, she accepted a job at a Lafayette station.

But Bill Siegel, WWL’s news director at the time, asked her to stay at WWL as the morning show’s traffic reporter. She had no interest in traffic, but Siegel agreed to let her try her hand at reporting other stories.

WWL “put me on TV with no experience,” Turk said. “This typically wasn’t a market where they groomed people who had not been on TV.”

She made the most of the opportunity, earning a promotion to morning show reporter. She eventually made the leap to "Eyewitness Morning News" co-anchor.

“I always say it just takes one person, and Bill Siegel was my one person,” Turk said. “He was the one that flipped the switch.”

Not acting like age doesn't matter

Now 33, she didn’t want to wait too long to make her next move.

“I didn’t do it as aggressively as I could have, because I was very happy at Channel 4. But I didn’t want to act like age doesn’t matter.”

She quietly reached out to friends in the TV industry. She spoke with agents, but “nothing really clicked, where I felt they would have represented me like I wanted.”

That she wouldn’t consider any market other than L.A. or New York was an issue.

“A lot of agents didn’t want to hear that. They were like, ‘That’s unrealistic. You need to look at (other) Top 20 or Top 10 markets.’ Well, I’m not known for being realistic, so you can’t be my agent.”

She heard about an opening at KCAL. Following an audition, the station offered her a job.

She’ll miss her WWL colleagues, especially meteorologist Payton Malone, her frequent partner in crime.

Their chemistry “is natural and real. Payton and I genuinely are people who, at 1 a.m. on a Saturday, are sending each other our pictures when we’re out, (asking) which one we should post. He’s been so much fun to work with and was so supportive when I said I was leaving.”

Their shenanigans often cast veteran morning show anchor Eric Paulsen as the curmudgeon.

“Payton and I, our favorite thing is our love-hate relationship with Eric. We’ll fight him for 10 seconds and then the next second it’s, ‘Where’s Eric? We miss him.’”

Will she miss sparring with Paulsen?

“The amount of times Eric Paulsen calls my phone, I don’t know that I’ll ever get to wonder what life is like without Eric,” she said, laughing. “He gets mad if I put it on 'do not disturb' to take a nap.

“He’s the best. Him and Payton are already joking about taking a boys’ trip to come see me, which would be pure hilarity — and a hot mess.”

'I'd rather fail'

The lesson that failure can ultimately lead to fresh opportunity is partly what inspired Turk’s 2018 memoir, "Off Air: My Journey to the Anchor Desk." If not for the support of others, she might not have completed that journey.

“I’ve had a village along the way. I get emotional thinking about how many people who didn’t have to help me, helped me. People who went out of their way to say, ‘I see something in you. Even if you don’t see it in yourself, let me help cultivate that.’”

That one of those people, “second mom” Kim Bondy, now lives in Los Angeles is just another sign that Turk is making the right move.

Meanwhile, she says her actual mom, Sharon, “is in complete denial. I heard her on the phone with a friend saying, ‘Well, Sheba might be moving to L.A.’ The movers were coming in two days! Iammoving!”

Turk hasn't had much time to be emotional about the impending move.

“Naturally I’m just not a very emotional person. But I have had some small flashes of it, especially with people writing stories about times we met and things they’ve watched on TV that meant something to them.

“I’ve been, in a good way, overwhelmed by how much love and support people in this city have shown me. I don’t take it for granted. I realize it was so special and so helpful, as I was growing the past 10 years.”

She looks forward to growing even more in Los Angeles.

“Life is so crazy. You can say, ‘This is what I want to do’ literally forever, until it’s the end. I just didn’t want to be left wondering, or have things I didn’t try. I’d rather fail.

“That has never bothered me. You can always come back home. And I think I’ve had enough fails to feel comfortable with getting back up.”