13 News remembers Ana Orsini

On December 19, 2024By Littum

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – The 13 News family is saddened to report the passing of our beloved friend and co-anchor Ana Orsini.

Ana had been with 13 News since June 2023 and we are devastated by her unexpected passing. She died last week of a brain aneurysm.

While there’s no perfect way to remember the life Ana led, we want to honor her by sharing some of our favorite Ana moments with you in the video above.

Ana’s friends and colleagues remember her as someone with bottomless empathy who always stood up for “the little guy”. She was a smiling face, especially to all her newest and youngest colleagues, and she is known in all newsrooms where she worked to take them under her wing and be a strong mentor for both work and life. Rescue animals were her passion and if she wasn’t celebrating Fur Baby Friday, she would be trying to find a new home for a sweet cutie in need. If Ana found out you loved true crime as much as she did, she’d share the calendar she keeps to track the releases of all the new episodes of the best podcasts. Her favorite was True Crime Obsessedand if you spent more than 5 minutes with Ana without hearing her favorite quote from it, “Let the women do the work”, then something was seriously wrong! She was a peanut-butter-M&M-loving, platform-Ugg-wearing, pink-or-purple-Stanley-toting ray of sunshine, even at 4:00 in the morning.

As a journalist, Ana was a writer, and she wrote the following about herself in her station biography:

There are many places Ana once called “home,” but she always knew Arizona was where she wanted to end up. Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, she began her college career at the University of Arizona. After one semester, she traded the mountains for the plains and graduated from Texas A&M in 2018. With a degree in journalism and a double minor in communications and sports management, Ana was always passionate about making sure viewers had all the information they needed to protect themselves and their families.

Before coming back to Southern Arizona, Ana was in Medford, Oregon, where she spent three years as a morning and noon anchor. She did everything from covering large wildfires to helping farm animals find their forever homes. Her career began in 2018 in Lubbock, Texas, where she worked as an anchor/reporter – covering everything from Texas Tech basketball to a months-long investigative series on bridal shop fraud. The highlight of her time in Texas was launching a “Pet of the Day” segment where she also helped local livestock.

When she wasn’t at work, you could always find Ana playing fetch with her own rescue dog, Harley, catching up on all things true crime, or reading a good book by the pool. In the fall, she always spent her Saturdays watching college football and cheering on the Aggies or her sisters’ alma mater, UCLA.

The Orsini family says they want Ana to be remembered for the bright, sunny person she was. If you would like to do something in Ana’s memory, please donate to your local animal shelter – Ana never met a dog she didn’t love!

Please respect the Orsini family’s request for privacy at this time and direct any inquiries to News Director Jessica Bobula.