Erica Lopez is joining WFAA 8 Dallas-Fort Worth as a morning traffic anchor from TEGNA sister station 9NEWS KUSA Denver, Colorado, where she has been an entertainment and traffic anchor.
And this is not Erika Lopez, who previously worked for TEGNA in Houston and Austin. She takes over for Brianda Villegas, who left WFAA this past summer.
Lopez joined the 9NEWS team in August 2020 as the traffic anchor for Mile High Mornings, delivering traffic reports every weekday from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. She was later promoted to weekday noon co-anchor just three months after joining the station. In addition to anchoring, Lopez field-anchored traffic coverage and reports on transportation issues as part of the station’s monthly Driving Forward franchise.
Before moving to Denver, Lopez spent two years in Birmingham, Alabama, working at ABC 33/40 WBMA. There, she anchored and reported traffic during the morning newscasts and anchored the 9 a.m. hour of Good Morning Alabama.
Earlier in her career, Lopez worked in Charleston, South Carolina, at WCIV ABC News 4, where she anchored traffic on the station's four-hour morning show across its ABC and FOX duopoly. She also served as a fill-in host for Lowcountry Live, a one-hour lifestyle program.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and New Media from Towson University. Before that, she attended Liberty University, where she competed as a Division I cross-country and track athlete on scholarship, plus served as a traffic intern for WBAL 11 News in Baltimore.
Proud of her heritage, Lopez is Colombian and Italian, and both of her parents are first-generation.
