Marie Hulett:  

Life Life takes you strange places... If you asked me in High School where I would be when I was 60, I would tell you that I would be a veterinarian with a booming hospital business. I would be married and I would have 2.5 kids (and maybe a grandkid or two), a dog and a cat.... Well, I started going in that direction and got continually side tracked. I almost became a veterinarian and definitely worked in the veterinary field...but since 1994, I wrote for the Orange County Register (about animals) and produced television shows and videos for non-profit organizations and colleges. From 2007 to 2019, I produced Educational television programming at a So Cal College and have produced Music Appreciation, Dance Appreciation, Biology, Anatomy & Physiology, Statistics, Physical Anthropology, Public Speaking, Cultural Anthropology, General Anthropology, Geology and other series. I won Emmys for Physical Anthropology, Chemistry, and Geology series, and was nominated for Statistics and A&P. It's nice to have educational series appreciated in this way. I am also the host of the Pet Place Radio show and Produced/Directed & Edited the Pet Place TV show on KDOC for 19 years until its cancellation in 2008. In the summer of 2018, I was diagnosed with leukemia. I promised my family I'd kick cancer's butt. One year after diagnosis, my leukemia numbers were in check thanks to daily chemotherapy that I take in pill form. I made the decision to move to Oregon and take the position of Executive Director of Institutional Advancement for a college in Salem. I have been married twice. Got married too young the first time (Anything before 30 is too young as far as I'm concerned...too much changing to do). I was married for 10 years and had two great daughters. Wouldn't change anything if I had it to do over. Still have a great relationship with my ex and we raised two well-adjusted daughters. My oldest graduated from the University of California, Irvine and earned a bachelor's degree in Psychology with Latin Honors and a Master's degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from CSUF. She currently works at a college, helping students who have come out of the foster care system so that they can achieve their goals. She got married in 2008 and adopted my first grandson in 2012 and my second grandson 3 years later! My second daughter graduated from Cal State Long Beach, majoring in Sociology and minoring in deaf communications. She made the dean's list every semester. She married in 2014. She and her husband have a beautiful little daughter and son. I remarried in 1996 to a great guy named Jeff. We have one daughter together. She graduated from Cal State Fullerton, with a bachelor's degree in fine art (entertainment art), and a minor in Japanese. She is a sweetheart. Jeff has children from a previous marriage...twins...a boy and a girl. They graduated in June of 2015 after majoring in aerospace engineering and chemical engineering, and are great kids. My stepdaughter married in 2019 and they have a little girl...we're essentially the Brady Bunch and we're having a super time. We have a big, fat cat and a parrot. Physically, I don't think I've changed much since high school. Maybe some gray hair - well, maybe a LOT of grey hair - and some well-earned wrinkles. But I sure ended up doing things I would have never expected. In that sense, I am way different. The road of life has been a blast. School My school days started at Lomita Elementary School...by far the best elementary school I have ever seen to date. The auditorium alone was better than most high school auditoriums. The architecture of the school was amazing...at least the original buildings that exude history and beauty. My elementary school teachers were all wonderful excepting my "high" first grade teacher who was as mean and stinky as a little kid could imagine. (When I was in first grade, the school year was changed...it used to be divided so that there would be a winter conclusion to school study as well as a summer conclusion. So, depending on your birth date, one would start school in the Fall or Spring. When that system was thrown out, all the kids who started the...Expand for more