My name is Sandi and I am known as "mom" to a lot of friends on the internet.

I am over 60 years old and live currently in Muldrow, Oklahoma, about 7 miles from the Arkansas border and Fort Smith, Arkansas, where I work. I am a training coordinator in the Information Systems department at a Medical Center. (Basically that translates to "telephone operator". I am owned by several Pekingese dogs and a LOT of cats, a guinea pig and a bird. I am married with two grown children and two grandchildren. My daughter lives currently in Litte Rock, Arkansas and my son resides in Washington.

My many cats are active in CLAW and I am a member of the WWB Cafe, The Menagerie and Fantasy Fights. My hobbies, besides the internet, are reading mystery fiction and crocheting and collecting model trains. My site for mystery fiction is HERE . I have interviewed several prominent authors and met some terrific writers through my site.

Several years ago, I was a Community Leader in Heartland. The CL program was pretty new when I joined and the enthusiasm by the CL's and Geocities was high but turbulence was high as well since Heartland was a huge neighborhood with lots of good CL's and a few "not so good" back then. When one of those deleted a committee website and threatened to do so again, I became acquainted quite well with Karen, the Community Manager for Geo. I was Chair of the Heartland Pet Gazette at that time with no Co-Liaison experience. It was as a result of this deletion of a committee website that the policy became to always place these away from a personal website and to back them up!

My site in Heartland, PEKEHAVEN is still there. It was just too big to move and contained sections on books and movies so it still fit their theme.

The "reflections" graphic was made for me by Cat the Lyn and remains an all-time favorite of mine. The Peke is our Smokey when he was just a baby.

I also ran a contest for pet sites off my personal pages and through that contest, I met Lisa, of Harraden's Habitat. I was good friends with Sharon and Ms. Editor to her Boomer J. Foxworthy, who wrote Boomer's Bytes for the Gazette. I knew Cat the Lyn as well, although at that time, I was not owned by any cats. Harvey was a good pal too from those days.

The first time Geocities came up with the idea to open a pet community, I was against it and wrote Karen, objecting strongly. The idea was tabled for a while. Our loyalty at that time was strictly to Heartland and we felt losing the pet sites would diminish our 'hood. Some time later, Geocities again made the decision to open the hood and this time, they did not ask for feedback.

The first Petsburgh logo

There were about 6 or 8 of us involved in the opening. A Heartland CL named Gypsy seemed the most obvious to be Liaison. There were some ladies from other neighborhoods also, a lady named ScorpiRose and a catlover named Ashton Leigh. Karen called me to talk about the opening. I did not ask for Liaison...I just told her I would be willing to help whereever needed. I felt the goal of the hood was to spotlight our pets and not us as individuals. She said, "Then you have the attitude I want and YOU will be the new Liaison."

When I got up off the floor, I asked for help since I had no experience as a Liaison and she said she thought Rick Robinson would be wonderful. He was technical, easy to like and loyal. We could be Joint Liaisons with him doing technical and personnel things and I would do committees, etc. I would handle the Petsburgh Station. During all this, we were in touch with Lisa, Lyn, Sharon and Harvey, who all came aboard as CL's. SuSue came aboard early on also but she was more acquainted with Rick and Harvey at that time than with me. She was a Co-Liaison in Heartland. I hope I "stole" her from those fellows and she is dear trusted friend now. We had Teri as a CL who had the beloved Peke, Asasha, and Critter (Chris) was with us a long time. April was here at that time and had beautiful cat pages. Later, we got Ferd who took over Park suburb when Sharon retired. There were many others and I wish I could name them all but this page would be miles longer. Almost all were always wonderful to me and I got along with them...if they were "irked" at me (*grin*)they kept it away from me.

For committees, we created the Blue Ribbon Pet Awards, Pride of Petsburgh, the Petsburgh Post, Petsburgh Petz and probably more that I cannot recall. I took the Petsburgh Post. A lady named Amy had Pride of Petsburgh and Sharon had Pet Site of the Week. ScorpiRose was leader of Petsburgh Petz. Many of these committee sites had to be created in only a day or two with all grapics, text, webrings,etc...ready to roll. Geocities was not known for their patience.

SuSue was elected our first Co-Liaison of Petsburgh itself. When Farm was added, Harvey was elected Co-Liaison of that one. While I was still Liaison, we added Zoo, Haven, and Park, and possibly Yard. I finally lived long enough to be elected Co-Liaison in Heartland. I left this area when they "re-organized" in 2002 because I did not feel I had the proper amount of time to devote to it.

I was a Mentor for Geocities and had the pleasure of helping train several CL's. Lisa and Mona are my "mentlings" and there were several others. Being a Mentor was a lot of fun and I loved watching them rise to become wonderful CL's and leaders. Rick and Clint are also my trainees and I trained many who have moved on to other ventures.

I kept the position of Liaison for a little over a year then felt it was time to step back and let others lead for a while. I was having some health problems and after a while I was just a bit "burned out" and needed to rest. During my tenure as Liaison, I had the distinct honor of being Liaison of the Month for all of Geocities and that was such an honor. I kept some of the beautiful graphcis I was given when I retired and part of them are shown here. Some are on another site. This made me bawl like a big ole baby! I was given several wonderful pages for being Liaison of the Month too and stored them elsewhere!