Just got off the phone with Christi Rowan, the ex-KARE employee who’s the “other woman” in Denny Hecker’s divorce. Earlier Wednesday, I wrote KARE should have disclosed Rowan’s employment when covering Hecker’s tribulations.
Rowan — who said lawyers discouraged her from talking to me earlier — wanted to correct one fact. I wrote that she met Hecker while handling his account; she says they actually met a decade ago outside of the workplace, when both were working on KARE sports anchor Randy Shaver’s annual cancer-research event.
She acknowledges servicing “part” of the auto dealer’s account, including a 2004 joint-sales deal between KARE owner Gannett and another local station for Hecker’s “Credit Automotive Superstore.” In 2007, when Hecker had most of his business at KSTP, Rowan worked a “Deal or No Deal” promotion for KARE. She says she left the station in July 2008.
Rowan says KARE pushed for her to sit down with Hecker for anchor Mike Pomeranz’s interviews, but she rejected her former employer. Why make an exception now? “I don’t feel I need to be in the media, but so many untrue things have been written about us, I did want people to know Denny and I had a friendship for over ten years,” she says.
Ms. Rowan’s contention that “they actually met a decade ago outside of the workplace, when both were working on KARE sports anchor Randy Shaver’s annual cancer-research event” requires quite a stretch of the term “outside of the workplace.”
For a person in sales, “working” on a promotional social event “hosted” by fellow employee would seem to be, in fact, an activity expected to put the salesperson in contact with potential clients. That is a salesperson’s job and the event is the “workplace.” In this case, Ms. Rowan appears to have been successful.