I have been a reporter for 25 years. I earned a bachelor’s in communications from the University of Washington in Seattle while working on the university paper, covering the Washington legislature in Olympia one winter and interning at two dailies, the Wenatchee World and the Everett Herald. My first job was working for the Sun Chronicle, a small daily between Boston and Providence that covered nine communities. During my 11 years there, I covered almost every news beat, writing for the daily and Sunday paper, before returning to Baltimore where my family lives. I then worked for Patuxent Publishing, a division of the Baltimore Sun, for 11 years covering eastern Baltimore County, before covering business and higher education for The Jeffersonian, the company’s countywide paper. After resigning in 2008, I edited a weekly in Southern Maryland before joining The Gazette in 2010, working first in the Laurel office covering communities in central Prince George’s County before transferring in June 2012 to the Gaithersburg office to write for the A&E section.