For Nadine Youssef, news anchor Diane Sawyer was the pot of gold at the end of a 900-mile rainbow.
Nadine, an 8th grader at Madison Junior High School in Naperville, has her sights set on becoming a television news anchor. For three years, she has been co-hosting a weekly program aimed at children on the Naperville cable television channel.
A career day assignment last spring resulted in a phone interview last spring with Mary Ann Childers, Channel 2 news anchor in Chicago. But Nadine loves to watch the weekly “Prime Time Live” on ABC, and Sawyer had become her role model.
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In August, she phoned Sawyer’s office in New York City and was happily stunned when the secretary said she could interview Sawyer for 15 minutes if she made the trip. “I said, `sure,’ ” the girl replied.
Earlier, Nadine had asked her father, Nagui Youssef, about the possibility of taking her to New York City if an interview was possible.
“You tell me when you want to be there and I will take care of the rest,” he told his daughter.
When Nadine gave the news to her father and mother, Olfat El-Mallakh, both immediately told her to prepare for the trip. The family, including Sabrine, 8, a 3rd grader at Meadow Glens Elementary School in Naperville, headed for New York City in a rented car.
They plowed through driving rain for most of the 36-hour trip. The 900-mile journey was extended to 1,000 miles when Youssef could not see highway markers in the storm, traveled 50 miles on the wrong highway and had to double back.
Nadine interviewed Sawyer as her father recorded it on the video camera for airing on the child’s weekly talk show on Naperville cable TV.
Sawyer invited the Youssefs to watch “Prime Time Live” from the control room, which aired immediately after the Naperville youngster’s private interview.
“This is an excellent example of how parents support a child,” said Dianne McGuire, 8th grade teacher at Madison who has Nadine in her reading class.