Marilyn was born to Walt and Alice Schroeder in January 1950. She was raised in a small town outside of Cleveland, Ohio. She went to nursing school there and then moved to San Francisco. There she worked as a critical care nurse and read the adventures of Maryann Singleton in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Later she moved to Colorado with her cat Jasper (the cat in the picture). She worked at Poudre Valley Hospital for several years as a nurse, head nurse and as nursing management. She then went to work for GRASP Systems, a company that installs a nursing work load management system in hospitals. GRASP is based in Boulder, Colorado. She then taught nursing at the University of Northern Colorado and worked part-time as a nurse in ER and finally fulltime as nurse coordinator in the Poudre Valley ER department.
We were married on May 1 of 1988, right before a snow storm. It was a full moon that night and we cellebrate our anniversaries in lunations. We had our honeymoon driving West to California and staying in Yosemite.
In 1999 we moved to Moscow, Idaho where she worked in the local hospital but then got a full time teaching job at Lewis Cark State College. She was a tenured professor there in their excellent school of nursing. The 40 mile commute to the Lewiston home of LCSC was one of the most beautiful in the country.
She is now retired. She enjoys the outdoors and travel. She is an avid gardener. Currently she reads lots of mysteries. In particular the "Bruno, Chief of Police" series that takes place in the South of France and the Guido Brunetti Mystery series featuring a Venetian detective.