It was a quiet Wednesday morning in Seattle, and Ron Corning was running errands before heading off to work when he felt his pager vibrate. Within minutes, the KCPQ-13 television anchor and Emmy-award winning journalist was at the scene of a bloody shooting.

A man had walked into the Northlake Shipyard in Seattle on Nov. 3, not far from where Corning lives, and opened fire, killing two people and injuring two others.

The Associated Press reported that Corning was the first on the scene and provided live coverage of events for his local station, KCPQ-13, and the national Fox News Channel.

“Corning carried out coverage of the shooting with the calm and caring style he’s become known for since arriving in Seattle in December of 1997,” the AP story said.

As family members of the victims arrived, the 28-year-old news anchor-reporter told viewers, “It’s difficult to describe how these family members are reacting to all of this. They’re clearly in shock, confused, and concerned, not knowing exactly what has happened to their loved ones. There have been moments of comfort here as friends and co-workers console the family members.” He continued, “We’re not going to show you pictures of family arriving. This should be a private moment.”

Back in Calais, Corning’s mother, Joan, was watching her son on the Fox Network as he calmly detailed the dock killings. She said she called his home. “He [the killer] killed two people, and I was a nervous wreck. He called and said, `Momma, I’m all right.”‘ she said.

Corning attended schools in Calais. His mother describes him as a good kid who was not interested in sports. When Joan Corning talks about her son, her eyes glisten and her smile is as bright as the light at West Quoddy Head. She said she never realized her son was interested in a career in broadcasting. While in high school, he did not work at the local radio station, nor did he apply for summer internships at any of the television stations in Bangor.

When told that her son is handsome, his mother responded. “Looks just like his mother. He really doesn’t,” she added with a laugh.

Although he had never openly shown interest in a broadcasting career, Corning said it was something he was secretly drawn to while growing up in Calais. “I didn’t know if it was realistic or not so I sort of kept it to myself,” he said.

At Wheaton College, in Norton, Mass., he enrolled in a pre-med program, but during a freshmen orientation class, the idea of a career in television blossomed. “It was as simple as the career center having a session for beginning students and saying, `You know. if you’re interested in television, and want to do an internship in New York, [’60 minutes’ newswoman] Leslie Stahl went to school here, and we’ll put you in touch with her and she’ll take you to CBS.’ And I thought, `Is it really that easy?”‘ he said.

During his first semester, Corning accepted an internship at an NBC affiliate in Providence, R.I. In the summer of 1990, he applied for an intern scholarship and ended up at WBZ-TV in Boston. It was during that internship that he had his first break as an anchorman.

“One Sunday night, at about 1 a.m., one of the weekend anchors there put me up on the anchor desk and let me read some news. That was my first shot at anchoring,” he said.’

While in college in 1991, the Calais native also did a one-month stint at Channel 2 in Bangor, and during the summer of 1992, a similar assignment at Channel 5 in Bangor.

“I just put together a compilation of stuff I had done at those three places, anchoring at WBZ and some reporting I had done at Channel 2 and 5, and I got my first job,” he said. In 1993, he was hired to anchor the weekend news for the NBC affiliate in Clarksburg, W.Va.

In December 1994, he went to work as a part-time reporter and fill-in anchor at KTVI-TV in St. Louis. At 23, he was the youngest employee at the station.

“The deal was, `You’re from a pretty small place, and this is a pretty big job. We think you can do it, but we’re not sure. So we’re going to give you a part-time job, and you’re going to have six months to prove yourself,”‘ he said.

In St. Louis, Corning began to attract national attention. He worked with CNN, covering the Midwest floods that devastated the area. He later won an Emmy for his coverage of a deadly bank robbery in a St. Louis suburb. The St. Louis robbery took place a few months after the bank robbery in Los Angeles where cops and robbers had a shoot out.

“A few weeks later, there was a copycat crime in St. Louis. Three guys did the same thing in a small suburban bank and a couple of people were killed. It was pretty tragic, and there was a chase through the streets. They crashed their van, and one gunman was on the loose in St. Louis dressed in armor,” he recalled. “They cordoned off part of the city, and we were trying to follow it and get information out to people about where this guy might be. It was all on-the-fly live television and that was the coverage I provided that ended up winning me an Emmy.”

In November 1997, Corning joined Q13 in Seattle. He said the nightly news is the most competitive in that market. “We have almost as many viewers at 10 p.m. than the other three [stations] have at 11 p.m,” he said.

Corning lives on a houseboat across from the one that was featured in the romantic movie “Sleepless in Seattle.”

Earlier this month, Corning covered the protests that turned into riots at the World Trade Organization Conference.

“I think one of the things that was interesting was it got tremendous national attention, and the media outside of Seattle tended to blow this thing up, calling it the battle of Seattle,” he observed. “Being in the middle of it was pretty intense, but over all it was pretty much isolated to just the downtown area.”

The attention Corning has garnered over the past few years has not gone unnoticed, the former Calais resident is looking at possibly hosting his own morning talk show.

“It is going to be probably the closest thing to the `Today Show’ on a local level. There won’t be news anchors per se, but two hosts and a news reader. If Al Gore is in town campaigning, he makes a stop on the show to talk about whatever is in the news that day,” Corning said. If successful, the young broadcaster said, the program could be tailored for a larger audience. “It’s what happened with Oprah who went to Chicago to host AM Chicago, and the company that owned it decided to syndicate it and see if people in other cities would be interested.”

Although Corning concedes that the airways are inundated with talk shows, he believes his show will be different.

“There is still the need for stuff that might be personality-driven and a little more information-driven and clean. What this does for me, I think, is put me in a place at 28, where the station … can in the stories they cover, tap a younger audience,” he said.

Corning said his ultimate goal is to do what it takes to be the very best and see what doors will open for him. He said there are so many opportunities in the field of broadcasting, that he is hesitant to predict where he might be in the next few years.

“Who knows there is so much happening there with the Internet expanding, and the Internet broadcasts and cable and satellite, it’s really hard to say,” he said.

When he talks with high school students, Corning offers a very simple formula for finding success.

“You need to put yourself in an environment where you will find the people who see your potential to do what it is you have a passion to do,” he said. “It didn’t seem like there was any logical way to go from Calais, Maine, to working in television in any capacity. It always seemed like somebody else’s dream, somebody else’s stroke of good luck. It is all about finding the people who will give you the opportunity to prove yourself.”