Virginia Vallejo

Several members of her family were ministers, writers and ambassadors, such as her paternal grandfather Eduardo Vallejo Varela, minister of economy (1930); her granduncle Alejandro Vallejo Varela, writer and close friend of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán; and his granduncle Jaime Jaramillo Arango, minister of education (1934), ambassador to several countries in Europe, and co-founder of the Anglo Colombian School.

Virginia Vallejo García (born 26 August 1949) is a Colombian author, journalist, television director, anchorwoman, media personality, socialite, and political asylee in the United States of America.

Virginia Vallejo was born on 26 August 1949 in Cartago, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, near her family's ranch.

Her parents were Juan Vallejo Jaramillo, an entrepreneur, and Mary García Rivera.

Her paternal grandmother, Sofía Jaramillo Arango, was a descendant of Alonso Jaramillo de Andrade Céspedes y Guzmán, a nobleman from Extremadura, Spain.

In 1950, the young family returned to Bogotá, where her siblings, Felipe (1951), Antonio (1955–2012), and Sofía (1957) were born.

She studied first in the kindergarten of Elvira Lleras Restrepo, sister of President Carlos Lleras Restrepo, a friend of her family.

She then attended the Anglo Colombian School.

In 1967 and 1968, she worked as an English teacher in the Centro Colombo Americano in Bogotá and, in 1969, in the presidency of Banco del Comercio.

In 1972, while she was working as director of public relations of Cervecería Andina, she received an invitation to join an upcoming television program directed by Carlos Lemos Simmonds and Aníbal Fernández de Soto.

From 1972 to 1975, she was as the presenter of "¡Oiga Colombia, Revista del Sábado!", a program directed by Carlos Lemos Simmonds and Fernández de Soto.

From 1973 to 1975, she was the host of the television musical shows "Éxitos 73", "Éxitos 74" and "Éxitos 75", produced by THOY, the programadora of the family of President Julio César Turbay.

In 1973, she began working as a reporter on TV Sucesos-A3, the newscast directed by Alberto Acosta; and, from 1975 to 1977, she became the international editor.

In the early and mid seventies, she hosted other television programs, like the quiz show TV Crucigrama, a cooking show with chef Segundo Cabezas, and a program for children.

In January 1978, she became the anchorwoman of Noticiero 24 Horas, which aired at 7:00 PM, and was directed by Mauricio Gómez, Ernesto Rodríguez Medina and Sergio Arboleda.

In March, the Government of Taiwan invited her to the inauguration of President Chiang Ching-kuo.

The same year, she was elected as the vice-president of the board of directors of the ACL, Asociación Colombiana de Locutores (Association of Colombian Speakers).

In 1978, 1979 and 1980, she won the award as the Best Television Anchor of the APE, Asociación de Periodistas del Espectáculo (Association of Entertainment Journalists).

In 1979, she co-starred in the movie Colombia Connection by Gustavo Nieto Roa.

In November, she appeared in Town & Country, opening the section The Beautiful Women of El Dorado.

In 1979 and 1980, she presented ¡Cuidado con las Mujeres!, a program by RTI Producciones, directed by David Stivel.

In 1980 and 1982, she worked at Caracol Radio.

In 1981, she founded her own programadora, TV Impacto, with the journalist Margot Ricci.

That same year, the Government of Israel invited them to do a special program about The Holy Land.

She was the only journalist sent by a Colombian media outlet to London to cover the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer on 29 July 1981.

Vallejo's broadcast for Caracol lasted three hours.

Between 1981 and 1983, she directed her program ¡Al Ataque! She was the first television journalist to interview Pablo Escobar in January 1983.

The interview was filmed at the garbage dump of Medellín.

During the interview Pablo Escobar described the charity project Medellín Sin Tugurios (Medellin without slums) launched by Escobar and his partners.

She covered the Miss Colombia pageant for the same station until 1985.

Until 1998, there were only three television channels in Colombia that belonged to the Government: two commercial and one official.

Inravisión, the official broadcasting entity, leased spaces to independent television producers known as programadoras, many owned by prominent journalists or presidential families.

This was the reason why Vallejo could work simultaneously as a news anchor and presenter of other programs.

On 18 July 2006, the DEA took her out of Colombia in a special flight to save her life and cooperate with the Department of Justice in high-profile cases, after she had publicly signaled several Colombian presidents and politicians of being beneficiaries or accomplices of the leading cocaine cartels.

In 2007, she published her first book, Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar, which led the Colombian justice system to reopen the cases of the Palace of Justice siege (1985), and the assassination of the presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán (1989).

The book was translated to fifteen languages and made into a movie in 2018.

Vallejo currently resides in Miami, Florida.

In 2019, she returned to her work as a television journalist for the international channel Actualidad RT.

In January 2024, Vallejo announced the upcoming release of her first novel of a trilogy,

a saga inspired in the recent history of Colombia and her personal life.