Meet Jacqué Scott

Jacqué Scott is one of those rarities, not just a Colorado native, but a third-generation native. “My father was in the Air Force,” she says, “So the family was stationed in different places, but whenever my mother was pregnant, she would rush home to Colorado to deliver each of her kids!”

Her dad was a Lieutenant Colonel and when he served in the Viet Nam war, the family was stationed in Hawaii, allowing him to get home when he had leave to spend time with his wife and children. Jacqué and her family also lived in Libya and Germany, but she graduated school and studied journalism at The University of Hawaii. She was still an undergraduate when she began working at station KITV, the ABC affiliate in Honolulu.

“The station manager called the university looking for a candidate to fill a position as news secretary and all-around go-fer. He wound up speaking to my advisor, explaining that he needed someone who could hold up under pressure and wouldn’t run out of the office crying. My advisor told him, ‘I have just the person for the job!’ That was how I got started.” Jacqué handled a variety of tasks at the station, and worked in the field as well as reporting on-air. She was quickly promoted to the position of anchorwoman, becoming one of the first women to hold that position in the country. “The trend was starting to happen in other places at that same time, but I was among the very first!”

Additionally, Jacqué did a variety of special assignment series, including one on home births. “Since I was pregnant at the time, I was able to use my own experience in covering the story, including giving birth at home with a midwife.”

Shortly thereafter, she relocated to Colorado. She had initially come to visit family, but once she got here, she called her husband, Jesse, whom she’d met through mutual friends in Hawaii, and told him to pack everything and to join her. They moved into her grandmother’s cabin on Upper Bear Creek.

Settled in Evergreen, Jacqué began working at The Canyon Courier. “I called them one day to say that it seemed as though there were things happening around the area that weren’t being included in the paper, so why not let me cover them? They agreed, and pretty soon, I was on the payroll.”

Jacqué had worked there for about five years when The Courier decided to start The High Timber Times in the Conifer/Aspen Park area, and she became that paper’s publisher. She and Jesse and their family had already relocated to that area, so it was a natural fit.

After several years overseeing THTT, Jacqué was recruited by Margaret Hennessy, founder of Mountain Connection, to take over that publication. “Margaret was ready to retire, so she came and got me. ‘Tag! You’re it!’ she said.”

“Once I got here, I realized what a great idea Mountain Connection is. And it’s Margaret’s brainchild. I’m just the next caretaker of this brilliant little publication.” The paper, created in the early 1990s, is produced monthly and mailed free to about 20,000 people. Its mission is to support our local nonprofits and to be a positive publication about the mountain community.

Jacqué acknowledges that it’s nice, “in retirement,” to be working on a monthly, rather than a weekly publication, and not focusing on “hard news.” She sees the paper’s purpose being to publish stories about the local population. “In fact, I’m inviting people who read about me here to send me their stories.”

And what do Jacqué and her husband Jesse do in their spare time? “We like to go home and sit on the deck. We love to watch the deer and elk come down and eat grass while we’re sitting just a couple of feet away from them. Isn’t that why we all stay here?”