Meredith Placko

As her mother tells it, Meredith was always destined to be a reporter. She'd get up at 5:30am to watch the morning news BEFORE morning cartoons. She'd stage mock newscasts and wanted to be April O'Neil. She also ran around with the neighborhood boys pretending to be X-Men. Her favorite was Emma Frost. Which honestly explains a lot about Meredith. ​ She joined the broadcast program at her high school when she was 15, slinging CDs and mini discs like it was 1999.

But it wasn't. It was 1996. By the time she graduated in 1999, her interest in hard news shifted and she was running a daily music show on Broward County's own 88.5 WKPX. But those times were soon to be over. College was starting up a month after her graduation, and it was time to get serious about her future.