MIAMI — The sudden and acute abdominal pain Rudabeh Shahbazi, then a Los Angeles television news reporter, felt was unlike anything she had ever experienced.

Still Shahbazi was more focused on concealing her discomfort than in getting immediate medical treatment.

Shahbazi, who grew up in La Grande, was in the middle of a live shoot when the stabbing pain struck. She did her best to continue reporting without giving her audience a hint of the sudden agony she was in.

No viewers, to the best of Shahbazi’s knowledge, realized she was not well during the segment. The journalist, who had suffered a kidney stone attack, said she aims to never let her personal story detract from the one she is reporting. This objective is one she has strived for throughout her 12-year television career, which is now ascending to a rarefied height.

Shahbazi, an award-winning television anchor in Miami the past five years, has been named to the weekend anchor team for News Nation, a national nightly news program that debuts Sept. 1 on WGN America, a cable network with 75 million television households across the United States.

“It’s a dream job,” said Shahbazi, a 2000 graduate of La Grande High School who has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Pepperdine University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.

One of the reasons Shahbazi, who will be based in Chicago, is excited about joining the News Nation team is she said she believes it will provide informed perspectives about the news not found on other networks.

“Traditionally members of the (national) media parachute in (to communities where there is breaking news),” Shahbazi said.

This means they often arrive uninformed about the local context of situations. News Nation reporters will be better grounded, Shahbazi said, for they will have access to the resources of 110 television affiliate stations in the United States. The News Nation reporters will receive assistance from knowledgeable local reporters, use their equipment and more. They also will be able to draw upon the expertise of many local weather experts.

“We will have the most meteorologists (of any news organization) in the nation,” Shahbazi said.

The news anchor said while she will miss her many friends, viewers and colleagues in Miami, from a professional standpoint, deciding to take her new position was not difficult.

“Once I understood the mission and the vision (of those creating News Nation) the choice was clear,” she said.

Shahbazi was at WFOR, a CBS affiliate, throughout her five-year tenure in Miami before accepting her position with WGN America. At KFOR, Shahbazi won a regional Emmy Award in 2016 and earlier that year was named one of Miami’s most influential women by Ocean Drive Magazine. The Miami News Times honored her as “Best TV News Anchor,” and she was the recipient of the Christopher Columbus News Network award for “Best Anchor” during her tenure at WFOR.

Shahbazi has worked at five stations since she began her television career in 2008, including KEPR in Pasco. A highlight when working there was the opportunity to do an on-camera interview with Barack Obama, then a U.S. Senator making a presidential campaign stop in Pendleton.

“It was a short interview but it was definitely exciting,” she said. “He was very nice and took the time to talk to reporters in a small town. Not everyone does that.’’

Shahbazi had just started her career after earning her master’s degree in journalism, which had an emphasis on television production. She did her master’s thesis on the many refugees who fled to Jordan because of fighting in the Middle East. The thesis, which included extensive footage and interviews Shahbazi shot in Jordan, ended up on the website of PBS’ international newsmagazine Frontline/World.

“It was a story that needed to be told,” said Shahbazi, who was born in Germany and is no stranger to world travel after accompanying her parents on many international trips while growing up.

At Berkeley, Shahbazi learned the art of recording video images and editing footage. She credits these skills with helping her land a job right out of graduate school 12 years ago when the Great Recession was hitting. Stations were cutting back then and seeking reporters with multiple skills as a cost-saving step. Shahbazi often found herself doing video reports alone, and she sometimes had to record herself.

“It was backbreaking work,” Shahbazi said.

She took subsequent jobs with stations in Los Angeles and Arizona. On more than one occasion she found herself taking risks or using unorthodox means to get stories. Once when she was in Arizona she covered a flood that washed out a bridge to a community. Shahbazi got a ride on a personal watercraft to get to the community.

One of the saddest stories she covered was the Jan. 8, 2011, shooting at a Casa Adobes grocery store near Tucson, Arizona, which killed six people and injured a number of others including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who suffered a serious brain injury.

“That was a pivotal story,” Shahbazi said, speaking of the impact it had on her.

Shahbazi was struck by how deeply the shooting touched the small community and by how residents extended hands of assistance to so many, including members of the media, a number of whom spent considerable time in the community.

“They wanted the story about the victims to get out,” Shahbazi said.

In Miami, one of the most exhausting challenges Shahbazi faced was covering the frequent hurricanes.

“We would provide wall-to-wall coverage,” she said. “One time we were at the station for five days.”

She said that during times like this a station’s staff bonds even more with its viewers.

“We did not lose track that we are all in this together,” she said.

The television journalist said she she owes her career to her upbringing in La Grande, where her mother, Theresa Gillis Noldeke, and her father, Shapur Shahbazi, both worked at Eastern Oregon University. Her mother is a reference librarian at Pierce Library, and her father, who died in 2006, was a history professor.

“Eastern was like my backyard,” Shahbazi said.

Rudabeh Shahbazi’s immediate family members with Union County ties also include her stepfather Charlie Gillis, a La Grande attorney, and her brother, Michael Gillis, who grew up in La Grande and now lives in Eugene. Shahbazi said she cannot imagine spending her childhood in a more nurturing place than the Grande Ronde Valley.

“I’m so grateful that I got to grow up in La Grande with such a loving and supportive family,’’ Shahbazi said.

She said she also benefited from the caring local community.

“There are so many people who will rally all around you,” she said. “It was like being part of a big family.”

Shahbazi remains good friends with many of her classmates from La Grande High, people she looks up during her many return visits to La Grande.

“We hang out together,” she said.

The future TV news anchor sat in on EOU classes her father taught, did homework in the university’s library where her mother still works, took part in on-campus productions like Island Magic with Eastern students, attended colloquiums and got to know many international students.

“This all had an important role in my development,” Shahbazi said.

At La Grande High, Shahbazi said she was blessed to have excellent teachers, including English writing and debate teacher Deanna Brickman, art teacher Bob Jensen and science teacher Larry Morrison, all now retired.

Shahbazi said Jensen’s art classroom was one of her favorite places at LHS.

“It made me feel so at home,” she said. “Students all felt so comfortable there.”

She credits Brickman with helping her develop writing skills she still draws upon today. She lauds both Brickman and Morrison with helping her believe in herself.

“They saw a bigger vision for me,” Shahbazi said. “It helps to have people in your life who believe in you.”