Way before Maria discovered her love for broadcast news, she spent her childhood and young adult life at the pool. Maria earned a four-year scholarship to swim on the
Northern Arizona University women’s swimming and diving team under head coach Andy Johns. She spent her college and high school summers lifeguarding, teaching swim lessons, and coaching recreation swim teams with the City of Glendale. Maria learned how to swim when she was four years old and spent more than a decade swimming competitively as a
USA swimming member with the Arizona Swimming Gauchos. Fast forward to life out of the pool as a TV reporter, every year, she covers heartbreaking stories of families losing loved ones to preventable water-related incidents. In 2020, she felt the need to do something to educate families about the importance of water safety, so she combined her extensive swimming background with her broadcasts skills and launched Arizona Family’s Swim Safe campaign.
