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Reporter wins top award Photo by Jim Craven Allison Zigich, of Jefferson Public Radio, has won the Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for a story on DUII victims. JPR volunteer honored for piece on victims of DUII By BILL VARBLE It's a long way from getting arrested for drunken driving at your front door to lunch with Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York City. Allison Zigich made the journey. At noon today, Zigich, of Talent, is to receive the Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for excellence in reporting from Drug Strategies, a Washington, D.C.,-based nonprofit organization that boasts Michael Crichton on its board and Walter Cronkite on its award committee. Zigich, 28, a news volunteer at Jefferson Public Radio in Ashland, won for a story called "Victims Impact." The feature profiled a program drunk drivers attend in which they're forced to confront victims of drunk drivers. It wasn't your usual program story. Zigich first went to the program not to report it but to be in it after being arrested for drunken driving in 1995. She says that after having too much to drink with friends she drove home drunk. She just made it to her front door. "I don't even remember getting home," she says. "The cops came. It was like being brought out of a deep sleep. The front end of my car was smashed from a sign I'd hit. I didn't even know it." Zigich wound up in a class featuring graphic slides of terrible crashes caused by drunk drivers. Jo Gardiner, then a deputy in the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, spoke forcefully at the meeting. Zigich says she broke down crying outside the auditorium. "It was exactly what I needed," she says. Two years later she returned to do the story. It's won several awards, and JPR plays it each holiday season. Zigich was one of four winners, each of whom gets a plaque and $5,000 at today's Council on Foreign Relations lunch with Diane Sawyer presiding. The award was named for CBS's first female correspondent, who broke new ground for women in the 1950s. The other winners are Matthew Schofield of the Kansas City Star, Timothy Egan of the New York Times and three reporters at WBBM-TV in Chicago, all for stories about drug addiction. At the time of her arrest Zigich was a student at Southern Oregon University. She hadn't been in trouble before. She says getting busted cost her several thousand dollars, and she's glad it happened. She attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for a time and met victims of drunken driving. "I thought never, ever again would I drink and drive," she says. "The program was so powerful. They said they wanted to reach one person. I was the one. I was blown away." Zigich credits JPR News Director Lucy Edwards with helping to focus the story. Kay Stein, another JPR volunteer, also worked on the story. Today, with a bachelor's degree from SOU, Zigich works as an office specialist and volunteer coordinator for the City of Talent. She hosts the Jefferson Daily program Fridays on JPR. She says these days she'll have a social glass of wine, but no more party-animal stuff. "I'm not an alcoholic," she says. "The only disease I had was getting in the car." She says being arrested was hitting bottom. "When I got that award it was like coming full circle," she says. "It's like another circle. It's wonderful." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA