Caroline Lowe leaves WCCO, joins migration to SoCal station KSBY

Caoline Lowe is headed for SoCal.

​Caroline Lowe put in 35 years on the crime beat for WCCO. Along the way she became a licensed Minnesota police officer and graduated from the FBI Citizen's Academy, just so she could better keep track of the bad guys.

Now she's leaving, and joining a growing group of former 'CCOers at Southern California's KSBY-TV in San Luis Obispo. She's going to head up the station's Santa Barbara County bureau.

Jeanette Trompeter moved to KSBY in 2009.

​SoCal sun and surf, in the home of Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron, John Travolta and Whoopi Goldberg, was evidently an opportunity she couldn't pass up. Can't blame her for that, after more than three decades Up North.

She won't feel like a stranger, either. Her daughter Shelby, a former WCCO assignment editor, is a news producer at KSBY. Former weekend anchor John Reger landed at the station after getting laid off by WCCO in 2008. And WCCO evening anchor Jeanette Trompeter migrated there after falling victim to 2009 budget cuts in Minneapolis.

Trompeter sounds like she's claiming credit for pulling Lowe west.

John Reger is another WCCO alum.

​"Shortly after I moved back home to San Luis Obispo, she and her husband came for a visit to say hi," Tompeter said on her blog. "The bug was planted then. She saw how beautiful this area is, kept saying, 'You live in Paradise Jeanette. You live in Paradise.' I do."

What do you bet they don't sit around after work and complain about the weather?