How to programmatically select the root node of Kendo UI treeview

Question

I am a Kendo UI newbie. My Asp.net MVC application has a Kendo UI treeview which is set up like follows. Each tree node has a unique Id (e.g. EmployeeId which is integer). How can I programmatically select the root node (which has Id of 1) of Kendo UI treeview and the root node's background color should be high-lighted ? Thank you for your help.

           var _root = new kendo.data.HierarchicalDataSource({
                transport: {
                    read: {
                        cache: false,
                        url: "/Employee/GetEmployees",
                        dataType: "json",
                        data: { employeeId: _selectedId}
                    }
                },
                schema: {
                    model: {
                        id: "Id",
                        hasChildren: "HasChildren",
                        expanded: "expanded",
                        parentId: "parentId",
                        ItemType: "ItemType"
                    }
                }
            });

            _tree = $("#treeView").kendoTreeView({
                dataSource: _root,
                dataTextField: "Name",
                loadOnDemand: true,                
                dataImageUrlField: "Image",
                dataBound: function (e) {
                    handleTreeDataBound(e);
                },
                select: function (e) {
                    handleSelect(e.node);
                }
            });

            treeViewCtrl = $("#treeView").data("kendoTreeView");

Answer 1

You can also use this little piece of code:

treeview.select($('.k-item:first'));

This selects the root node. You could also expand it using:

treeview.expand($('.k-item:first'));