Valerie Hoff DeCarlo, former CNN and 11Alive reporter, dies at age 62
Valerie Hoff, a veteran Atlanta-based reporter who worked at CNN and 11Alive, died last week of lung cancer at age 62, according to her husband, Derrick DeCarlo.
“She was a force with everything she did,” said DeCarlo, who married her in 2004. “She was a strong, capable, loving woman and a wonderful mother.”
She was both an anchor and a reporter for more than a quarter-century. For 11Alive, she spent six weeks covering the aftermath of 9/11 in New York City and publicly chronicled her adoption of her younger son in Russia and her battle with breast cancer.
Hoff “had the best voice. She had the best presence on air,” said Andree Lloyd, a friend since 1998. “I am really going to miss hearing her voice.”
Hoff, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from Ohio University, came to Atlanta and attended Emory Law School. After a year there, she decided to pursue broadcast journalism instead.
In 1990, she landed a job at CNN as a writer, then an anchor on CNN Headline News and CNN’s Airport Network. She also reported on fashion, money and nutrition.
During that time, she built a coterie of girlfriends that included fellow CNNer Kathleen Kennedy. Hoff gave Kennedy a place to live for several months when she was broke. “We became instant friends,” Kennedy said. “We’d go out and party at the Buckhead triangle: McNeeley’s, Clarence Foster’s and Zazu’s.”
Hoff also gave Lloyd a bed to sleep on in her home for a couple of months in 1999 after Lloyd’s divorce. “She was so hands-on as a friend,” Lloyd said. “She always brought it back to the positive and gave me the spin I needed to keep going.”
DeCarlo said CNN, despite its international stature in the 1990s, didn’t pay as well as local TV news, so Hoff jumped to 11Alive (WXIA-TV), the Atlanta NBC affiliate where she split time reporting and anchoring.
On her public LinkedIn page, Hoff noted she specialized in investigative, consumer and legal news. “I enjoy anchoring,” she noted, “especially in fluid, unscripted situations such as breaking news.”
Her favorite work, DeCarlo said, was her Ways to Save segments on 11Alive, seeking deals for viewers.
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For a time, Hoff embraced extreme couponing. “She not only reported it, she lived it,” DeCarlo said. “We’d go to grocery stores and she’d have a stack of coupons. We would have $200 of groceries for $20.”
After she and DeCarlo had their son Nicholas, they had trouble conceiving a second child, so they opted for adoption in Russia. They ended up traveling to Siberia to pick up Jhenya in 2009, a journey which she tracked in a blog that is still on the 11Alive site.
“Infertility in our case,” Hoff wrote, “turned out to be a blessing.”
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. “It was a shock to her,” DeCarlo said. She had a double mastectomy and reconstruction surgeries, fully recuperating. In subsequent years, she remained a strong advocate for breast cancer awareness.
She hit some professional troubles in 2017, when, in a private Twitter message on behalf of 11Alive, Hoff sought permission from Curtis Rivers to use a video he had posted of a white police officer punching a black motorist. In prior tweets, he had used the phrase “news n---as” on his feed to describe journalists.
She repeated the term during the interaction. After Rivers found out she was white, he said he felt offended and publicized their interactions.
“It was incredibly stupid, but I can’t take it back now,” Hoff told AJC columnist Bill Torpy at the time. “I have never used that word. Ask anyone who knows me.”
DeCarlo said his wife was originally given a two-week suspension, but after her interaction went public, 11Alive forced her to resign.
Hoff sued the station for breach of contract, a lawsuit that was later settled out of court.
“She was obviously disappointed,” said Kelly Crawford, a longtime friend who talked with her extensively about it at the time. “She felt like it could have been a teachable moment.”
After Hoff’s journalism career ended, she worked on a travel and food blog, but DeCarlo said she couldn’t monetize it. She played a lot of golf and became a day trader specializing in options. “She sat with her charts and diagrams on her computers and just attacked it,” he said. “She never had a losing year.”
Last year, she found out she had stage 4 lung cancer. Cancer “came back like a freight train,” he said.
But Hoff’s sardonic sense of humor never waned, her friend Kennedy said: “When she told me she had lung cancer, she was very matter-of-fact about getting her affairs in order. Then she said, ‘You know. Maybe I should just cash in my 401(k) and live it up!’”
Ever the optimist, Hoff was planning a cruise with her kids this month before her death. In a text chain with her friends planning a Christmas party just two weeks ago, said friend Ellen Reynolds, Hoff offered to host “if people can clean up for me.”
She is survived by DeCarlo and her sons, Nicholas and Jhenya.
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
