She spent her first eight years living on the Moapa Valley Paiute Indian reservation in Nevada (her father worked for the Union Pacific railroad). Her family moved to Southern California in 1946, where she finished the first part of her education, graduating with a degree in music (flute and piano) from Chapman University in 1959. To help pay for her education, she worked full time during these years at Disneyland. For several years after graduating, she worked for a large educational music company, becoming its sales manager. In 1970, she was hired by a store in Denver, Colorado, to develop a band, orchestra and choral department. She was then hired as a part of a team of three sales representatives for 20 music publishers to the western states where she travelled by motorhome to ten states twice a year.

After spending most of her life in music with 20 years in the business, she had the desire to broaden her life with something new. She returned to college, earning a masters degree in Adult Christian Community Development and worked for a large church in Colorado as coordinator of outreach ministries. During this time, she wrote a 16-week training course for bereavement ministers and developed an eight-week forum for those who had problems or questions about their faith.

My primary reason for writing my book was to attempt to establish a realistic view of a wonderful group of people that few know anything about, and due to lack of proper education, still think of them as uncivilized in the past. I wanted to show that they were very community-centered, moral, thoughtful people; a different lifestyle than others we knew, but a great and wonderfully organized society. Their children were very disciplined and capable, loved to play and have fun just like kids of today. We are all just people. We are family.