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Mimi grew up in Milwaukee and went to school in West Allis. Her family moved to Madison in 1967 where she attended and graduated from LaFollette high school Mimi's dad worked for a family owned trucking and storage company called Central Storage and Warehouse, home of the famous butter fire.

Her first real job was in 1972 working for Rayovac 2 blocks off the square on East Washington Ave. At Rayocav, Mimi audited battery inventories and transferred stock to nationwide warehouses.

In March of 1977, she started working for the State of Wisconsin, Division of Health and Social Services in the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation located at 1 W. Wilson St. She was the first line reviewer of all Vocational Rehabilitation applications.

It was in September of 1978 that Mimi transferred to the WDNR Bureau of Finance as an account examiner. The office was in the Pyare Square Building and Marian Geninwas became her supervisor. Mimi audited travel vouchers and contingency fund payments for the Central Office and Districts. Ten years later in 1987, she transferred to the Bureau of Program Services/Fleet and Inventory Section, located on Darwin Road, where Rube Reddeman became her new supervisor. As a Fleet Specialist, she was responsible truck, heavy trucks and heavy equipment accounting records and posting the expenses to the Bureau of Finance records. It was a good transition from Finance to Fleet because she already knew all the staff in the Central Finance Office and in the District Finance Offices.

In November of 1999, Mimi transferred to the South Central Region as a Facilities and Fleet Coordinator for the Region. Responsibilities included building maintenance contracts for janitorial, lawn care, snow removal, and day to day needs for keeping the SCR up and running. When people asked her what she did her reply was, "I call myself the South Central Region "landlord!" That pretty much summed it up for the Facilities part of the job. On the fleet side, all of the SCR employees were her customers. Mimi was responsible to provide the best type of vehicle to staff to get their particular job done. Fleet reductions were a big challenge during the Department's budget reductions.

Mimi retired from the WDNR on September 7, 2007.

What keeps her real busy now is dog rescue. Mimi is partners with two others doing miniature schnauzer rescue in southern Wisconsin. What started out as with about 5-6 dogs a year in the 1990's has ballooned to 35-40 schnauzers every year for the past 10-15 years. The trio are now part of a nonprofit rescue and have become a lot more organized in how dogs are accepted into the program, how the dogs are vetted and how the group finds adoptive homes for them.

Though doing dog rescue is almost a full time job in itself, Mimi feels it is also very rewarding. The dogs don't know a thing about why they were given up or why their owner didn't try to look for them when they ended up in a shelter. What they hopefully know is when they got into rescue, it was the first day of the rest of their life. They are usually very grateful!

When not doing rescue work, Mimi has her own schnauzers to care for. Usually, the older, compromised ones end up living out their life at her house. She also enjoys rounds of golf with her lifelong friends of 35+ years. With most being retired, they like to escape to warmer destinations to play in fall, winter and spring.

Mimi has been officiating high school volleyball and basketball for decades. At sixty years old, she decided to call it quits and hung up her basketball shoes for the last time in 2011. She still officiates volleyball and will probably continue that for the foreseeable future.

Mimi says, "I totally enjoy being retired!"