“These days, every time I think about my heritage, I dip into memories made in my childhood.”
PJ Randhawa sometimes feels like she’s screaming into a tsunami.
“I’m a journalist and an immigrant—two of the least popular things to be right now,” she said. “It would be a full-time job to dispel all the negative misinformation many people have about both…”
Randhawa is an Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter for KSDK News Channel 5. Prior to coming to St. Louis in 2015, she worked as a television news anchor in Rapid City, South Dakota, as well as a reporter in Columbia, South Carolina.
“I report the news, so I consciously never try to become it, but that’s becoming harder to do. I struggle with that,” she admitted. “I want to tell the stories about the immigrant families who are working hard and enriching their communities and making our country better. I’ve lived that story. I believe in them!”
Born to parents of North Indian descent, Randhawa hails from Winnipeg, Canada. But even as a young girl, she knew America was always the destination.
“Coming to America was my parents’ dream! In 1975, they made it as far as Winnipeg, Manitoba, before starting a family and getting stuck,” she said. “Throughout my childhood, they always talked about moving to California, Kansas, Texas…but it was never the right time.”
Nevertheless, Randhawa says encouragement from her parents, especially from her mother, gave her the push she needed to overcome a few obstacles—though she may not have realized it at the time—that were getting in the way of her own American dream.
“My mom wanted me to be the next Oprah. She saw something in me. But I was always really shy. I had no dreams to go in front of the camera,” she recalled. “When I got into grad school at DePaul University, I looked into producing the news. I would see these girls in the bathroom—the anchor girls, fixing their makeup—and I’d be behind them in front of the mirror and think to myself, ‘What did they have that I didn’t have?’”
But as her studies progressed, so did her confidence.
“One of the things I did was to put together stories for other people to read on the air. And I remember thinking, ‘Why not me? I know what I’m talking about! I can do this!’ It became less about me and my shyness, and more about getting important information out.”
Just a few years later, Randhawa’s tenacity and commitment to keeping the public informed would earn her a 2018 Mid-America EMMY Award for her KSDK report on the rising numbers of medical prescription errors at some of the larger chain pharmacies.
“I want viewers to believe me when I report the news…I work every day to do that,” she said. “Mine isn’t the loudest voice in the conversation, but it’s consistent, educated and perhaps more globally aware than many of my peers.”
This is something Randhawa credits to her Canadian and multi-cultural upbringing.
“In Canada, there is such a conscious awareness among the public of global issues, politics and culture,” she explained, noting that even the concept of a “melting pot” is viewed differently. “Canada prefers to be seen as a ‘fruitcake.’ Everyone is an individual—separate but equal—and baked as a whole. In a melting pot, you’re blending in, as if people fear what’s different from them.”
Randhawa was 18 when she left Canada to pursue her college education in the U.S.
“Success to me in Canada would’ve been having some freedom from my over-protective parents, buying my own groceries or getting an apartment,” she mused. “I didn’t realize how sheltered I was until I found myself on the streets of Chicago. I saw real wealth, real privilege—a woman in a fur coat walking a tiny jewel-encrusted chihuahua, or an exotic, ultra-rare sports car likely not drivable in Canadian climate.”
For the most part, Canadians are modest folk and don’t flaunt wealth, according to Randhawa. And while her parents stressed the value of modesty and of hard work, the most important lesson she learned from them was to be proud of who she is and never be afraid to stand up for it.
“My parents constantly feared I would lose touch with my culture, and I’m only now realizing why they were right to be afraid. Growing up, I wanted to be like everyone else. I didn’t want to be known as ‘that Indian girl,’” she admitted. “Now, I’m happy to say it’s a description I wear proudly.”
Her parents, Sukhdev and Kuljinder Randhawa, passed away on the same day, 12 years apart. But they’re never far from her thoughts, she said.
“These days, every time I think about my heritage, I dip into memories made in my childhood.”
These include watching hours of local Punjabi TV on the weekends, getting dressed in Indian suits to go to the Sikh temple on Sunday morning, and the aroma of her mother’s Indian home cooking.
“Like a class that I barely passed, I wish I have paid more attention,” Randhawa admitted. “It makes me feel closer to what I’ve lost. It reminds me of a childhood filled with unconditional love.”
Randhawa still has plenty of extended family in India, where she has traveled to commemorate a few family milestones, including to scatter her parents’ ashes in Kiratpur Sahib, a Sikh religious site in Punjab, and to celebrate her sister’s wedding in 2014.
“One of my proudest moments was when I got my first anchoring job in South Dakota,” she said. “Some Indian publications who had been following me ran a story labeling me the ‘first Sikh news anchor in the U.S.’ Eventually, the article made its way to the small, rural farming village where my father grew up in Punjab. He never finished high school because he had to help with farming. But a teacher read the article to all the students at his old school and they lost their minds. I like to think my father would be proud of that!”
