It all started at a 5000-watt radio -- oops, sorry, that's Ted Baxter's bio...I was born a poor black child -- oh, no, wait, that was Steve Martin...Okay, here we go...I was born and raised in Chicago -- north (Cubs) side -- where I still reside. I'm a city kid.

I am also, for better or worse, a product of the Chicago Public School system. At Alexander Graham Bell School, I learned to read, worked on the school paper and starred in school plays. Later, I transferred to James G. Blaine, where I honed my math skills, played softball, and learned to smoke. From there, I went to Lane Tech High School, where I majored in disgruntled coolness. 

Without so much as a clue as to what I wanted to do after high school, I decided to take an extra year off before college. I took a couple of downtown office jobs where I learned the important lesson that clerical work was not for me. I tried to hang in there until the second fall semester, but I cracked around mid-June, quitting my job and hightailing it to the nearest university just in time for the late summer session.

At Northeastern Illinois University, I had a double major in English and Business until I decided that English was an impractical major and realized that I hated Business. I switched to Communications which seemed to be the right call for me. The only problem was that, for various reasons (mainly that the internship coordinator for the department was more interested in getting me to clean his office than he was in helping me get an internship), I was in the wrong school.

I transferred to the University of Illinois at Chicago, which is where I accidentally got into radio. As a Mass Communications major, my intention was to work behind the scenes in TV production and so, in my last semester at UIC, I applied to the internship program at WMAQ-TV, the local NBC affiliate. WMAQ was unable to accommodate my class schedule, but the intern coordinator there suggested that I consider an internship with WKQX Radio (Q-101) which, at the time, was owned by WMAQ and was looking for an intern to produce its morning show. The early hours would allow me to get to my classes and I could still attend intern meetings where I could schmooze with WMAQ-TV execs. 

Producing the Murphy in the Morning Show turned out to be so much fun that I forgot to shmooze the TV people. At the end of my internship, Murphy offered me an actual paying gig doing the same thing that I'd been doing for college credit. Thus began my professional radio career. 

During the four years that I produced the Murphy in the Morning Show, I came to realize that what I liked best about radio was being on the air, rather than behind the scenes, and I wanted to do more on-air work. And so, I left Murphy and his newsman, Dave McBride and my other friends at Q-101 and set off to make my on-air fortune. 

Two years and numerous non-radio-related odd jobs* later, having sent demo tapes far and wide, I still had not found my fame and fortune -- or even a gig. I decided I would send out one final tape -- to Shadow Traffic (now Shadow/Metro Broadcast Services) and if Shadow didn't hire me, I'd give up on radio and move on to Plan B. Luckily for me -- particularly since there was no Plan B -- they hired me. 

I started on-air with Shadow as a fill-in reporter, doing traffic and/or news reports on nearly every station in Chicago and its surrounding areas. I eventually landed my own gig with Shadow as newsperson on the Danny Bonaduce show. I worked with Danny for two-and-a-half years until December of 1996 when he left Chicago to do mornings in Detroit. In March of 1997, after a few months at the local oldies station, I was rescued by the Steve Dahl Show where I was dispatched to play on the radio under the guise of traffic reporter. We have since dispenced with even the pretense of doing traffic, so now nobody knows what the hell I do around here. And I'm damn glad to do it.

In addition to my illustrious radio career, I have recently (July 21, 1998) taken on the awesome job of mommy to Jackson Masada, love child of me and Garry "Duke" Masada to whom I have been married since 1985. My plate is very full and my cup runneth over. Thankfully, I have a dish washer.

*During high school and college and my two-year hiatus from radio, I worked at a ridiculous number of jobs including positions as an ice cream scooper, telemarketer, convenience store clerk, car rental agent, copywriter, waitress, receptionist, office clerk, video production assistant, fitness trainer, dog trainer, museum speaker, postal worker, video editor, mobile DJ, and art consultant.