I was born in Deming New Mexico to Larry and Patricia. I moved to California when I was six months old and a majority of my life has been lived out in California. My father was an aerospace engineer working mainly with defense contractors and his job required frequent relocation. By the time I was 21, I had moved 25 times. As a result of these frequent moves I developed the ability to make new friends rather quickly. The downside is I suck at intimacy.I graduated from college in 1990. Following graduation I subbed at a school in Tulsa OK as I was going to flight school at Spartan to get my pilots license. I didn't finish flight school because at the time the cost of finishing the program seemed astronomical (it was rather expensive) and I had more of a heart for teaching. I returned to California where I subbed in Juvenile detention facilities. I received my first full time teaching offer with the Los Angeles Unified School District in 1993. They had an alternative certification program in which you went to school part time to finish your graduate education requirements for the Professional Clear Teaching Credential while teaching full time. The program took two years (93-95) to complete. Once I completed the program, I was eager to explore another geographical area so I moved to Hawaii. After getting settled in I stopped by the local school district office and put in my application. I was hired immediately to teach English and Spanish at Molokai High School. I guess it's difficult to find Spanish teachers in HI. I came back to the mainland following a year of teaching in HI and got into non-profit development. I also went through the grant writing and program development training at University of California Irvine. I did that until I got married. We moved from California to Texas as I had been hired to be the Theater Arts Director at a performing arts magnet school in El Paso TX. Normally, I wouldn't have considered TX as an option of places to live but my parents lived in Las Cruces NM and that's really close to El Paso TX. After my ex and I broke up, I went over to Korea to teach ESL for a year. I returned back to the states and my career skewed a bit as I became a social worker. I did that in NM for a year before moving to WA to do the same sort of work for a year and a half. After a couple of years of working with old people who kept dying, I decided that working with young people had some advantages over working with old people and constantly being confronted with end of life issues so I took a rather substantial cut in pay and got a job working at the Children’s Receiving Center in Portland OR. The CRC is a place where cops and social workers take children who have been forcibly removed from their homes. The scenario is almost always the same…mom and/or dad get arrested for drugs and/or alcohol; the kids go to the CRC.Intertwined in this bio...I got involved with an organization called "Youth With a Mission" about 17 years ago. Right now my goal is to save up enough money to go on the Around the World in 80 days DTS out of Denver. It's 11 countries in 11 weeks. My best friend is Oyvind from YWAM and he has far exceeded my tally of countries (I've been to 15--Oyvind has been to 32). I'm in my 40's and haven't settled down yet and probably never will.Reading the previous paragraphs it probably looks like I’m obsessed with my career. I’m not. It’s just a device I use to tell a linear story.
