I was born about a mile from where I am currently working, at the Kaiser Permanente Interstate campus. Later our family moved to San Luis Obispo, CA for my father's job. I stayed throughout school and completed my college education at UC Irvine. However, I always knew that I wanted to live in Oregon and moved back to Portland after graduation. I worked at Oregon Health Sciences University (University of Oregon Medical School, at the time) for a while, in radiology research, where we worked on catheter therapies, including angioplasty and stenting. I left research to attend Physician Assistant school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1979. I graduated in 1981 and returned to Portland. I started working at Kaiser Permanente Northwest in 1983, doing family practice in the Salem North Lancaster Clinic. I transferred to Orthopedics in 1989.