NCTV17 first shared the story of Naperville’s Lucy Westlake in 2016 when she was just age 13. NCTV17 has continued to follow Lucy’s story over the years, including her latest accomplishment of becoming the youngest American female to reach the summit of Everest. Lucy and her father share their own thoughts on what local television coverage has meant to them and the role NCTV17 plays in the community.
Westlake Shares Her Story with Local Media
Lucy Westlake first got hit with the climbing bug at age 7, starting with Black Mountain in Kentucky. After setting a world record of becoming the youngest girl to climb the 48 highpoints in the continental U.S., her father reached out to NCTV17, hoping her story would reach more people in the community.
“NCTV17 was the first group we reached out to and sure enough, they did a great job,” said her father Rodney Westlake. “And it really was one of Lucy’s first times ever on camera.”
Giving Her a Voice
“The first time NCTV covered me I was really little, which was really cool being from a local station, from a community I know and trust,” said Lucy. “NCTV has been covering me for six or seven years now, which is really helpful having all that media experience now when I go on national TV.”
Today Lucy is a freshman studying Public Policy at USC. As Rodney says, “She has this huge passion and honestly, she didn’t know how to find her voice, and she didn’t realize her voice mattered, which is really what NCTV17 allowed for her. Who knows where she’d be, what she’d be studying or what she’d be passionate about?”
