Robin Roberts Reflects on Hurricane Katrina 20 Years Later (Exclusive)

For more than two decades, Robin Roberts has been telling real-life stories on “Good Morning America.”

One of the biggest stories that Roberts ever covered was Hurricane Katrina, which was intensely personal.

Now, Robin is looking back at the massive story that devastated her Mississippi home, New Orleans, and much of the Gulf Coast when it hit in 2005.

Promoting her new ABC special, “Hurricane Katrina: 20 Years After the Storm with Robin Roberts,” she told “Extra,” “It was incredible how the audience craves authenticity. They crave the person that’s delivering information to them to be honest with them, and I was. ‘This is really bad,’ and people picked up on that by my emotion.”

Roberts had many emotional moments covering the story, including the night she and her crew were stopped by cops.

She recalled, “I stick out my head and I go, ‘Hello, officer,’ and he sees me… and he doesn’t see Robin Roberts, ABC News, he sees Robin Roberts from Pass Christian, Mississippi, and he was like, ‘Come on through. You can come through with your crew.’”

During the time, Roberts was also desperately searching for her own mom while working on the story.

She admitted, “I couldn’t go on air until I find my mother, and a police officer taking me and saying, ‘I’ll help you find your mother.’”