Arizona to Alaska

Born in Phoenix, Lisa lived in numerous Arizona towns as a child and later spent several years in California. By young adulthood, she was in Alaska and started mountain climbing. She climbed in South America on different expeditions, seeking summits in Ecuador, Chile and Argentina. She also traveled solo through Europe and Asia.

From Fire to Shield to Evergreen

Climbing left Lisa wanting strong first-aid skills and she signed-up for an Emergency Medical Technician course. The class included a ride-along with the Fire Department which exposed her to the rewards of helping people in crisis. She moved to Oregon for training and was soon back in Alaska, pulling 24-hour shifts as a paramedic.

“Paramedicine is physical and autonomous and demanding and technical. I loved it.”

After a number of years, she transferred to the Police Department. Her second career started with the position of street officer and she still claims it is the most demanding job in law enforcement. After a few years, she became a detective, working in the Vice unit and later in Crimes Against Children, with a special assignment as a Hostage Negotiator. She went back to the street as a sergeant and later returned to investigations, supervising Internal Affairs.

“All those years in emergency services made the city a map of memories, many of them very sad. I wanted to move…a couple of thousand miles.”

Riding, Writing and Running

Lisa and her husband relocated to the Evergreen State and adopted two former racehorses from a rescue facility. She turned to writing, working on both mysteries and mainstream novels. One novel was selected as a finalist in the 2007 Malice Domestic contest and another made the Top 100 in the 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Lisa also began competing in the obscure sport of Ride and Tie, a back country trail race that combines running and riding, covering distances of 20-35 miles.

“Writing is such a sedentary pursuit, it would be dreadful without the promise of hours on trails.”

Miles alone on the million acres that is Washington’s Olympic Peninsula left Lisa wanting protective company. She found a German Shepherd at a pet rescue site and taught him tracking, as she had with her previous dogs.

“My last shepherd earned the FH title twice. This was before the existence of the FHII and VST titles. He also earned the Schutzhund III with decent scores, but we never V-scored”. (The FH, or FährtenHund, is a German sport tracking degree. A V-score is a judge’s rating at or above 96%.)

She resurrected the training log (the Canine Scent Work Log) she had created and used when teaching her previous trackers. Her rescue dog V-scored at his first trial and she sent the log to Alpine Publications. Alpine released the book in 2007.