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Valerie had a normal upbringing in the small town of Brattleboro, Vermont. She spent most of her childhood outside, finding adventure and wonder in the nature that surrounded her all year long. As she grew up, her love of the outdoors never wavered and often sent her down paths she might never have walked. Everyday, in her eyes, held something new. Something new to see, to feel, to experience. It could be anything, and in the mystery of it she found excitement.

One particular day a few weeks before her fifteenth birthday Valerie experienced something so new that she almost thought she’d been dreaming. Doors didn’t normally swing off their hinges when she pushed them open. More than a few accidents happened that day before she found herself sitting in the living room with her parents and two other unfamiliar faces that blinked back at her confusion.

Life might not be beautiful, or fair, or easy all the time but she learned to adapt to it rather than fight it. You could either drown in life or swim through it. Valerie chose to swim. Four years later and life returned to as normal as it would ever be. Truth be told she wouldn’t have wanted it to be as before. Not now, knowing who and what she was, having been trained and set free to go about her life doing what she could when she could. All that mattered to Valerie was that it was her life, and short or not she planned on living it to the fullest.

Valerie returned home and spent the next two years working at a local diner. The pay was decent enough but the tips were good and the customers were always friendly. Eventually she had saved enough money to send herself to the other side of the country, Nevada. Where she had been accepted at UNLV. It was a relatively new place, only opening in 1957, but her sense of adventure drew her there all the same. Now, she couldn’t wait to walk onto the campus.