Vicki Vermilya Chamberlin

My journey from High School has been a long road. When it was time to graduate, the last thing I wanted was more school. Instead, I chose to join the working world and get a job. This worked quite well, until I came to the realization that even though I had a decent position in banking, I wasn’t able to get significant promotions since I didn’t have a college degree. Hmmmm. Hindsight.

I opted to join the Marine Corp with the intention of utilizing the GI Bill for future educational purposes.
After my stint in the Corp, I returned to Colorado and went back to work for a financial institution, where I also met my husband. The organization we both worked for had some “rules” on relatives working for the same organization, and we were anticipating some flak. However, not long after we married, we decided to make a move from the Denver area and went to Casper Wyoming. Little did we know that this would be the first of 24 moves through Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Missouri, California ( almost Oregon) and Arizona.
From Casper, we migrated back to the Eastern Plans of Colorado, and at that time, my husband decided to change from a career in banking to that of Public Administration necessitating he get his Masters Degree.

From there, we moved to the Western Slope of Colorado – timing is everything, as we were just moving into our new home when he found we was accepted to the University of Denver for their MPA program. He had to commute from the Western Slope of Colorado to the University of Denver. I will never forget at the time he was working on his thesis I had just shattered my ankle and had to keep my foot elevated higher than my heart. Try typing a thesis in this position – quite a site. At this time, I was working and going to school at night.
Fortunately, I had a solid banking background and was able to secure employment with no problems. While on the Western Slope, I was the Executive Director for a public/private partnership with my board of directors being members from the County and various towns within the County. I spent a lot of time working on receiving grant monies for business startups and worked with various business entities on their business plans and often packaging SBA loans and providing start up funds for businesses which also provided employment opportunities. This program did receive national recognition for the innovation at the time.

As we moved from the Western Slope of Colorado, we went to Kansas. With my husbands job, we had to live in the town where he worked, and I often commuted to work. Since we were just outside of St. Joseph Missouri, I ended up working for a Bank in Kansas City and achieved numerous promotions within the organization. At this time financial institutions were doing a lot of merging and acquisitions and I moved to another Bank in the capacity of Senior Vice President in charge of several areas. Once again, I was working on achieving my degree from William Jewell College. This was put on hold when we moved from this area to Santa Monica CA.

We were in CA for seven years, and had four housing moves, one of which was due to our home being one of the 1,000 homes which were destroyed in the Northridge earthquake.

While in this area, I was a Senior Vice President and Chief Credit Officer for a Bank, and working through UCLA to complete my Bachelors Degree. At this time, I also seriously considered making a career move from Banking to Financial Services with the thought that as my husbands position changed, I would simply move my client base with me in my own investment company. Working towards that end, I received my securities licenses and insurance licenses and went through a two year training program with a company with the intent of completing the training and going independent. This was good planning, as with my Bachelors Degree ( finally) in hand and my licenses as well as a book of business, we again moved, back to the Kansas City Area.

It was much easier to go from Missouri to California (except for the cost of living) than from California back to Missouri. When we arrived back in the mid-west, it was winter, cold, snowy and an adjustment to the system, but it worked out once we found housing and I got my business re-established.
I found that with my moves, most of my clients didn’t care, as I had an 800 number, and made regular visits through the years to meet with them for portfolio reviews and the referrals kept coming.
We worked really hard to end up in Arizona, as that was where we were targeting for retirement. It worked! My husbands next career move brought us to Surprise.

In 2001, I decided to sell my business . The hours were long and demanding with little if any time off. Due to 9-11, the transition took longer than anticipated, as many of my clients were nervous about the markets and I stayed on for a bit to ease them into their new environment. W e had our house built in 2001 ( the third one) and started working on “retirement”. It was always a goal of ours to have an early retirement and enjoy life. It does seem strange though to being in the same house for several years now. We were really good at packing/moving and change.

2009 was a difficult year for us. I had been diagnosed after more than a year of test after test with a GIST. I was finally scheduled for surgery where my esophagus was removed and reconstructed. A good portion of this year was spent in and out of the hospital. Fortunately, for the last couple of years, I have remained No Evidence of Disease, and hopefully will stay that way!

We spend a lot of time traveling, seeing the world and the United States. We will often take off on a road trip as we want to see what is down that particular path. We also stay involved in local activities. I am not sure where the days, weeks, months, years go, but they zip by and we often wonder how we had time to work.
It is hard to believe that we have been married for 35 years. Seems like only yesterday. David is a great guy and I am fortunate that our paths crossed when they did.

At this juncture, it will be interesting to see what my old high school mates are doing today.