Over the past year, Avery had done a redesign of the classic newsmagazine show. The biggest difference between Avery and her competition? She never touched politics. The talking heads had that angle covered, and Avery didn’t have the stomach for it. She lightly covered current events and performed the obligatory interview with dignitaries when the present environment demanded it. But she allowed her co-anchors to cover the hard news of the day while Avery took on society’s nonpolitical topics. She had parlayed a journalism major into a law degree, and they each served her well in her role on American Events. Avery had a knack for sniffing out the truth when looking into a true-crime story, and the legal smarts to know when to hand her findings over to the authorities. One of her most-watched exposés covered the details of a missing toddler from Florida. Avery’s investigation—which included interviews with the parents, a deep forensic analysis of the case report, and the discovery of new information provided by the father—uncovered disturbing evidence that suggested the child had drowned while under the supervision of her grandmother, who then hid the child’s body in a shed behind her home. So startling were Avery’s discoveries and so vetted were her sources that the authorities took notice and reopened the case. American Events cameras rolled when police showed up at the grandmother’s house with search warrants and confirmed the tragic findings.

Over the past year her popular true-crime specials were legend, and her stories of hope and survival—from sinking a minivan into a pool in order to demonstrate how to escape, to jumping from an airplane to reveal the best way to recover from a failed parachute—drew viewers from all walks of life. Simply put, Avery Mason was redefining newsmagazine television and others were scrambling to keep up.

Her first contract with HAP News was a modest two-year deal that named her as a contributor to American Events. It allowed Avery to host several segments each season and occasionally fill in for Mack Carter when he took vacation time. Avery used those introductory years to get her feet wet and learn the business. Her rising popularity soon brought a more substantial contract that named her co-host of American Events. Mack Carter was the star, but Avery was earning a name for herself and finding an audience. When Mack died—a shocking event that stunned the nation—the network restructured Avery’s contract into a lucrative one-year deal that paid her half a million dollars as they scrambled for a permanent host. The future of AE was uncertain, and in that moment, Avery was an experiment. She was inexperienced and unproven. She was young and untested. She was, everyone believed, a temporary fix. But Avery Mason had proven them all wrong. She rose to the challenge and never balked.