Krystle Padilla's story is an example of being in the right place at the right time. It's also a reminder that you never know whom you're talking to and how persistence can pay off in the biggest way.

As an undergrad at Penn State University, Padilla was volunteering to help with ESPN coverage of a football game while taking a course on the Big Ten. She was given random assignments, including making posters, driving people around campus and helping out where needed.

"During one of my shifts, I met someone, and I could tell he was lost, and I offered to help," she recalled. "We talked for 30 seconds in the elevator, and I told him I was studying telecom and wanted to edit." The man told Padilla about software used by ESPN and urged her to give him her contact information before the ESPN team left the next day. She did just that and later found out the man was a vice president with ESPN, four levels above the person who would become her boss at the network.

Throughout the following year - her senior year - Padilla contacted ESPN every three weeks inquiring about jobs. Her persistence paid off, and she interviewed with the network in March, but wasn't offered a job, so she took a position with another station. She had just completed a few weeks of training there when ESPN called with an offer in its sports editing department, and she took it.

Padilla has worked for ESPN as a sports editor since 2011, and this year, her work was particularly outstanding. She earned an Emmy Award for her editing on "SportsCenter."

"The show won an Emmy in May as a daily show, and the crew that worked on it, we didn't find out we were actually going to get statuettes until the fall," she said. "It's a brand-new concept for editors to receive them, and I got mine in November."

The oldest of five children, Padilla lived in Marietta since middle school, and much of her family still lives there. She graduated from Donegal High School in 2007.

"I was an Army brat," she said, noting that she was born in Germany. "I was always moving, but I ended up in Pennsylvania."

Her family's itinerant lifestyle made it difficult for Padilla to play on sports teams as a child, but she still developed a love for volleyball and softball. She also became a big Broncos fan, mostly through bonding sessions with her younger brother when they'd play "Madden NFL" on PlayStation, and she always chose the Denver team "because I liked the logo," she joked.

Now living in Philadelphia, she spends her days editing ESPN morning programming, supplying content from games the night before.

She was honored to win the Emmy, and she's happy to receive a statuette. "Even though the Academy changed its policy, ESPN didn't have to order all these statuettes for the crew," she said. "It was a great gesture."

She proudly displays her Emmy in her home, and she's looking to the future, continuing to do a job she loves.

"I put the Emmy on my shelf," she said, "and I left room for others."