She has reported from the White House, on the funeral of Princess Diana in London, on the superpower summit in Moscow, on the presidential election in Mexico, on Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba, from earthquake-ravaged El Salvador, and on the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, for which the station won its first national Emmy award, beating Dateline and Nightline.

Noticiero Univisión, the network’s nightly newscast she co-anchors with Jorge Ramos, is watched by millions of Hispanics across the United States and in eighteen Latin American countries. In markets, like Los Angeles, New York and Miami, it consistently beats English-language networks for ratings.

Since starting as a beat reporter with KMEX in Los Angeles in 1981, Salinas has, in a sense, come of age with the national Hispanic community, which newly released Census figures show has nearly doubled in the last twenty years.

Her influence—she has been named one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the country, and she was also named one of the top fifteen most influential Hispanics among Latino voters in a poll conducted by Hispanic Trends—has grown right along the economic, social and political power of what is now becoming the largest minority population in the United States.

“You want people to trust you as an anchor,” Salinas says. “I feel this commitment, like I’m part of the growth of Spanish- language media.”

That commitment began on her very first assignment: an L.A. election at a time when there were no Hispanics on the city council, the Board of Education or the Board of Supervisors for Los Angeles County, when redistricting had just opened up a possibility for a Hispanic to be elected to the city council.

“To cover the story,” she remembers, “I did my man-on-the-street interviews and out of fifteen people, fourteen had no idea that there was an election in the first place. And I thought, you know, our people are never going to be empowered, our people are never going to have representation. They’re never going to have political clout unless we educate them.”

That dedication has inspired others. Nancy Agosto, the morning anchor on Los Angeles' channel 34, where Salinas started her career, says the national news woman is her role model. “I really, really admire her and everything she's achieved,'' said Agosto, who has worked with Salinas. “Whenever I do a story, I try to emulate her.”

Salinas’ role model is her mother. The Mexican immigrant from a small town in Mazatlán came to the United States in the 1940s and worked as a seamstress all her life. “I remember my mother actually working more than my father. My father was a very interesting man, he was very educated. He spoke five languages, he had a doctorate degree in philosophy.”

Being a mother to Gabriela, 6, and Julia, 4—as well as stepmother to her husband’s two daughters from a previous marriage—is a priority for Salinas, who sometimes finds it hard to juggle her roles as journalist and mom. (Her husband, Elliott Rodríguez, is a television anchor for WFOR-TV, the CBS affiliate in Miami.)

“She's the closest thing I know to a Superwoman,” says Jorge Ramos, her co-anchor. “She tries to be the best mom, the best journalist. She wants to have a positive influence on society. She wants to do everything. And I think that's what makes her so good.”

The stories that leave the biggest impact on her, however, are not the interviews with the presidents and leaders and guerrilla operatives, not the investigative pieces or the world news events. They are the smaller stories of personal loss and tragedy. Recently, with the addition of a daily commentary on Radio Unica and a weekly column on the Univisión.com website, her influence has reached beyond the television screen.

One of the turning points in her career, Salinas says, is when someone told her to dump Spanish-language television because there was no future in it. Born in Los Angeles and with a fluent command of English, she interviewed for a job at a local CBS affiliate and was passed over because she didn’t look ethnic enough.