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Faces of Fox 4: News director Sarah Zak

Posted at 3:33 AM, Aug 30, 2018
and last updated 2018-08-30 09:14:45-04

Today’s Face of Fox 4 is about News Director, Sarah Zak. The native Floridian married her high school sweetheart, Richard. They both went to Hillsborough High School in Tampa and moved back to the sunshine state in April after four years in Cincinnati.

The family enjoys fishing. Sarah seems to have caught the big one. She says, “Being back with our family. It’s a two hour drive to see just about anybody, my sister and kids.” About her own family, Sarah says, ”It’s funny. I like to say we have three first kids. We adopted the boys. Marty was the first child ever in our home. But Dominick is the oldest so he’s the first that way. And, Rory is our first girl first biological so yeah, we have a family of firsts." She adds, “Like lots of families, we had fertility struggles. We wanted to have kids for a very long time. And it wasn’t working out and we looked at some of our adoption options. We prayed about it we just felt like there were just too many kids out there that need families already, right in our community. So, we got licensed to foster two children and it ended up being within a month of each other."

If two weren’t enough, she says, “Surprise, surprise, we had Rory a few years later." Like many full time moms, Sarah and her husband are a team raising three young children. They balance each other’s schedule and simply pick up where the other leaves off.

As the news director, Sarah says she also aims to balance the skills of the newsroom with the concerns of the community. She says, “Some of the stories that you’ve been doing in trying to help people navigate difficult government systems. There is a lot of just things that are tricky. We are busy. Just look at us. And we don’t have time as people, to go and search for hours on the internet trying to get an answer to something. So, if there’s something that our station can do to help people get those answers, make their life a little better, that’s what we want to do."

There are several groups if you are interested in fostering or adopting a child, or another guardianship program.

https://www.facebook.com/thefosterparentingtoolbox/

https://www.facebook.com/nfpaonline/

https://www.facebook.com/fosteradopt/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/biz/christian-foster-parent-support-page-191387444235955/

If you're not ready to foster a child, you could help by being a guardian ad litem.

https://www.voicesforkids.org/

How to get started as a foster parent

https://www.childnetswfl.org/foster_parents.php