Paula Shepard:  

After graduation, I worked as a Nurse's Aide for a nursing home and moved out with friends from school into my first apartment. I soon met my husband, Brian, and we began dating. We married a year later, and in a few years, we had two sons. Shawn, who is now 36, and Aaron who is 34. We bought my Grandmother's house in Maryvale and lived there until the our boys were in high school. Our neighborhood was changing and we decided to buy some land and build our dream house. We found an acre of land near the White Tank Mountains, and lived in a 40-foot trailer for five months while our house was being built. We had chickens, geese, ducks, goats, horses, dogs, pot-bellied pigs, and a snow white Turkey I named Thanksgiving. About 2 1/2 yrs. later I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and due to my health we had to sell the animals. This was a very sad time for me as I am a huge animal lover. I worked at Gilbert Engineering for 14 years as a machine operator, making and bagging parts for cable television. I had to take a medical retirement, and now I am lucky enough to be a home maker. In 2009 Brian and I entered dive school. We graduated Open Water Divers, and turned around and entered the Advanced program, and now we are Certified Advanced Scuba Divers. If someone would have told me I would be diving with sharks some day, and loving it, I would have told them they were crazy! I have petted a sleeping Gray Reef Shark, and we have enough dived with a Tiger Shark. She was absolutely beautiful. Two years ago when our son told us he was getting married on the beach in the Bahamas, we started making plans to do the shark feeding dive they show on Shark Week each year. The Dive Master's...Expand for more