The Balancing Act

NBC "Today Show", May 6, 2010

Associated Press, May 6, 2010

AOL News, May 6, 2010

ABC "The View", May 10, 2010

FNC "Fox & Friends", May 11, 2010

(Los Angeles—May 3, 2010, 2010) Terry Jo Duperrault, co-author of ALONE: Orphaned On the Ocean, was eleven years old in 1961 when her family was murdered at sea aboard a rented sailboat while vacationing off the coast of Florida. She jumped overboard just in time to escape.

Surviving four days on a piece of cork in the middle of the ocean, Terry Jo’s rescue pictures graced LIFE Magazine soon after her rescue.

This is the first time Terry Jo, now known as Tere, has ever been able to fully tell her story. In September 1988, Oprah Winfrey reunited her with the freighter captain who saved her but, even then, she was not healed enough to reveal what it takes to survive for four days alone at sea.

After surviving the murder of her family, Duperrault chose to live with her aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandmother. A Green Bay native, she went on to study at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and spent a summer studying in Spain. Following two years of majoring in biology then Spanish, Duperrault transferred to St. Michael’s in Milwaukee and then the University of Minnesota, studying X-ray technology. She decided not to pursue that training after realizing she could not deal with emergency room trauma. After taking time to focus on her family, she returned to her education, finally receiving a bachelor’s degree in cultural geography from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

She spent her professional life guarding the water that threatened her as a child, retiring as a Water Management Specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources after fourteen years.

Duperrault, her husband Ron and their dog Angel, live in Kewaunee, Wis. They have six children from previous marriages and five grandchildren.

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Contact:                Michael Wright    818-784-4600        gwprmike@sbcglobal.net