In 1999, after a three-year stint in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, I joined the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Division of Kansas Attorney General’s Office as an Assistant Attorney General under then-Attorney General Carla Stovall. My work included suing unlicensed pharmacies for selling prescription medications to Kansas via the internet, which was a novel concept at the time. I left to work part-time for the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, and later I prosecuted securities fraud for the Kansas Securities Commissioner.

In 2003, I deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the Kansas Army National Guard. In 2004, I returned to full-time military service as a judge advocate and remained as an active guard and reserve (AGR) officer until March 2021. I served the last ten years as a logistics officer. When I retired, my career spanned 31 years of military service, including service as an enlisted soldier, a judge advocate, and a logistics officer.

During my deployment to Afghanistan in 2012-13, I served as Director of Logistics on the staff of a Lieutenant General and oversaw the planning for and orderly shutdown of U.S. bases and airfields in Afghanistan. I used the lessons I learned in Afghanistan during my last duty assignment, which was planning the Kansas National Guard’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the fall of 2020, the Kansas Attorney General’s Office hosted me as a Hiring our Heroes Fellow, and in January 2021, I returned to the office an assistant attorney general in the Legal Opinions Government Counsel Division. I became Deputy of the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Division in May 2021.

I graduated from Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas, the University of Nebraska College of Law, and the U.S. Air Force Air War College. My husband, Matt, and I have six children – five boys and one girl. Matt is also an attorney and is an AGR officer. Our oldest two sons are both West Point graduates and active-duty Army officers, and our daughter-in-law is a Naval Academy graduate and an active-duty Marine Corps officer. I am only half joking when I say I work after my military retirement because three of our children are in college – a graduate student at Kansas State, a senior at the University of Kansas, and a junior at Arizona State – and two are threatening to go to law school. We live in Topeka with our two dogs, Lincoln and Molly, and our youngest son, who is a high school sophomore. In my spare time, I volunteer with a variety of non-profit organizations, read non-fiction books, and research our family genealogy.

As challenging and fulfilling as my decades in public service has been, working with the team of professionals in the Kansas Attorney General’s Office, and in the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Division in particular, is the happiest and best time of my career. I appreciate collaborating and working with fellow consumer advocates in the attorney general and government service community. I truly love this job. Attorney General Schmidt holds consumer protection as a priority, which reinforces our pride in the contributions we make every day assisting and protecting our fellow Kansans.

Other articles in this edition include:

• An Internet Privacy Win for Maine Consumers
• Attorney General Consumer Protection News: September 2022
• Federal Consumer Protection News: September 2022