Artis Henderson may not be your average Associated Press reporter.

The 29-year-old, who is graduating from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, will be covering West Africa for the news cooperative after a strange road of tough times and triumphs, according to a Columbia news story.

Four years ago, she was living in Florida, the wife of an Army helicopter pilot stationed in Iraq. A few months after they were married that year, he died in combat.

“That first year, she recalled, 'I was so overwhelmed. I didn't think I could breathe,'” according to the story. “She stayed in her job doing public relations for a local non-governmental organization and tried to come to terms with her husband's death.”

But after getting on with her life, she gave thought to an earlier idea of becoming a reporter. When she won a blogging contest for a local newspaper, that put her on course.

“I couldn't believe that I had won, and that I would be paid to write,” Henderson, who had been preparing for a trip to Cambodia at the time, said in the story. “The editor suggested she write a travel piece, which later ran on the front page of the paper's travel section. And that's when Henderson's journalism career took off.

”She wrote for other local business outlets, and persuaded the editor of Florida Weekly to give her a column on relationships. A friend suggested applying to Columbia's journalism school, but she doubted she'd get in. 'I thought I didn't have the experience,' she said. She started last fall, concentrating on magazine writing."

The rest is history.