As we reach the end of 2023, I am taking a moment to reflect on favorite stories, experiences and events of the year. I believe in dreaming big and want to make a meaningful difference in the world, particularly at this time when there is so much trouble all around. I...
We have had the great honor on two multiday efforts in 2023 (with another planned search in the Spring of 2024) to work alongside members of the Yakama Nation in the search for unmarked graves on the site of the first US reservation boarding school just outside White...
“When my teammate Guy and I started writing our book “A Dog’s Devotion: True Adventures of a K9 Search and Rescue Team” some 5 years ago, we knew absolutely nothing about the publishing process. Getting an agent, a publisher and getting a final manuscript presented...
Book publishing activities are heating up. Final touches to our book, “A Dog’s Devotion,” were made in May. We just approved the book jacket and we have now started working with our Lyons Press assigned publicist Emily Cable. The learning curve is steep given that we...
I try to live my life with intention by establishing a "theme of the year" for myself, something I started doing many years ago as New Years Resolutions seldom did much for me. My theme in 2020 was "sisu" (yeh, look it up, it is powerful), and the year before was my...
I came into the world of K9 search and rescue suddenly and naively, with a vision of wanting to help improve the world in some way. It's the morning of September 11, 2001, and the phone rings. To my surprise, it's my big brother who calls all the way from Stockholm. I...
Writing our adventure memoir has been quite the journey, and a different journey than Guy and I expected when we first decided to write A Dog's Devotion together. Now that we are approaching the final phases of actually publishing and marketing our book, doing an...
My very first article was published in a professional magazine (HRMagazine) almost exactly thirty years ago and it was titled: The Case For Valuing Diversity. At the time I was a young, idealistic first woman executive in a male-dominated utility and someone committed...
In my lifetime, I’ve only once called for search and rescue help, and it happens to have been for my “missing” husband Scott some ten years ago. Scott had been invited by our daughter’s boyfriend, Chris, to climb a technical route on Vesper Peak, and had gladly...
I am sitting at my desk in my home office looking out over a foggy Puget Sound. A cold pack is wrapped around my foot, a hot pack strapped on to my shoulder, my face mask is hanging on it’s hook ready to cover my nose and mouth if I have to venture out from the safety...