Karen Knabe:  

After dropping out of school in the eigth week of my senior year, having only attended ten days, I went to work at Carson-Tahoe Hospital as a lab tech, transferring to St. Mary's Hospital in Reno a year later as an assistant to the pathologist. A couple of years later I moved back to Carson City and worked with my mom at her nursery school, EVA's KIDS. The summer of 1977 I traveled to Alaska, driving all the way by myself up the unpaved Alcan Highway. I travelled all over from Fairbanks to Anchorage and spent a few months on a homestead off milemarker 114 in Sheep Mountain. I returned home to the Lower 48 in 1978 and worked around Carson City, Tahoe and Reno, then met my ex-husband of nineteen years and moved to Las Vegas. Well, as anybody recollects, Las Vegas was never Nevada, just a portion of Los Angeles that poured over into the Mojave and made a puddle of nonsense. I lasted 15 months in the desert and returned to God's Country ... Northern Nevada ... I burst into tears when I drove up the highway past Fort Churchill, and jumped out of my car and kissed the ground when I could see the Sierra Nevadas! I got married in Mom and Dad's backyard on Winnie Lane, with Kim Keeler, aka Shearer, aka Cassidy by my side and old Harold Lamb and Izzy from Mojo! I had an opportunity to open a Great Earth Vitamin store in Reno, as I had managed a store in LV and was excited! But first, until the store opened, I worked at the Ponderosa Ranch for the Summer, funny thing, I had never been there before! In the following few years I returned to working at the out-patient lab, then in 1985 I lost my Mom to brain cancer. I needed a change from the medical field, as I would go and perform lab draws at the nursing home where Mom died. After managing a large HMO dental office, I had an opportunity to return to the hospital and learn EKG and cardiac stress testing, etc. My ex wanted to move back to Colorado, so in June 1988 we made the big move, after having helped my Dad relocate to the California desert. In November 1989 we moved to the Seattle Washington area as lay ministers with Point Man Ministries, an outreach to Viet Nam vets and their families. My ex was editor of their newspaper and production manager of the outreach materials for the various conferences we offered nationwide. I worked as a their communication secretary and conference/eve...Expand for more