I am a classically-trained pianist and received a BM in Performance from USC's School of Music in 1989. I have had the privilege of studying with Daniel Pollack, John Perry, Ilana Vered, Alicia de Laroccha, and Eduardo Delgado. I have been giving private lessons for 29 years.

My experience teaching music extended into classrooms, and I was credentialed and eventually earned a Master of Arts in Teaching from USF in San Francisco. My teaching experience includes special education, reading specialist, and teaching ages preschool through high school. Most of my teaching experience in early childhood, elementary, and middle school. I have 25 years teaching experience with school-age children.

I am currently self-employed as a disabilities specialist. I specialize in dyslexia, dysgraphia, auditory and visual processing difficulties. I also give private piano lessons.

I became interested in family history because of my father and my mother.

My father's father took off when he was around 10, faked his death, ran off with another woman leaving my dad and infant uncle with my grandmother. This was around 1948. By the 1960's, my dad developed a rare vision disorder called keratoconus.

My dad flew to San Francisco from Hawaii in 1964 to have a corneal transplant by the man who invented the surgery. While my dad was there, he was visited by his grandmother and he learned that he had a half-brother and a half-sister. His grandmother never brought them to see my dad while he was in the hospital in San Francisco. They were visiting from Detroit, but I don't think my dad knew this detail at that time. This is how my dad found out that his father was still alive.

When I was little, my dad told me all of this. About ten years ago or so, I began the search for his long lost family. I searched and used many different sources and luckily, one of my grandfather's relatives had given my dad's mother some photo albums. While those didn't directly help, I was able to figure out who the people were in the photos and figure out places by the dates and descriptions written on the photos.

I kept searching and it was difficult, as my grandfather's name wasn't his actual birth name. I used other relatives like his mother and father,and finally, someone posted something on Ancestry and the location was Detroit. I emailed them with my father's story and they emailed me right back letting me know that the story was amazing and true!

At that moment, I realized I found my dad's family. I immediately called my dad, and he said, "Hurry up and get phone numbers! I'm going on a road trip!"His half-sister was in San Francisco, minutes from where I lived, and the half-brother was in Detroit. Since 2010, we've had lots of get-togethers and are all friends on Facebook.

My mother's family interested me, too, as my mother is 100 percent German. I was always curious to see if any other language or heritage was present in her line. Most of her family was in either Erie or Pittsburg Pennsylvania. Currently, I am researching my grand fatehr and great grand father's military records along with graves and burials of my mother's family.

I do have pictures of tombstones of most of the Klingers in my mother's line. I will try to scan and upload them and enter birth and death records onto Find A Grave's website so that others can use this information for their family research.

I am a classically-trained pianist and received a BM in Performance from USC's School of Music in 1989. I have had the privilege of studying with Daniel Pollack, John Perry, Ilana Vered, Alicia de Laroccha, and Eduardo Delgado. I have been giving private lessons for 29 years.

My experience teaching music extended into classrooms, and I was credentialed and eventually earned a Master of Arts in Teaching from USF in San Francisco. My teaching experience includes special education, reading specialist, and teaching ages preschool through high school. Most of my teaching experience in early childhood, elementary, and middle school. I have 25 years teaching experience with school-age children.

I am currently self-employed as a disabilities specialist. I specialize in dyslexia, dysgraphia, auditory and visual processing difficulties. I also give private piano lessons.

I became interested in family history because of my father and my mother.

My father's father took off when he was around 10, faked his death, ran off with another woman leaving my dad and infant uncle with my grandmother. This was around 1948. By the 1960's, my dad developed a rare vision disorder called keratoconus.

My dad flew to San Francisco from Hawaii in 1964 to have a corneal transplant by the man who invented the surgery. While my dad was there, he was visited by his grandmother and he learned that he had a half-brother and a half-sister. His grandmother never brought them to see my dad while he was in the hospital in San Francisco. They were visiting from Detroit, but I don't think my dad knew this detail at that time. This is how my dad found out that his father was still alive.

When I was little, my dad told me all of this. About ten years ago or so, I began the search for his long lost family. I searched and used many different sources and luckily, one of my grandfather's relatives had given my dad's mother some photo albums. While those didn't directly help, I was able to figure out who the people were in the photos and figure out places by the dates and descriptions written on the photos.

I kept searching and it was difficult, as my grandfather's name wasn't his actual birth name. I used other relatives like his mother and father,and finally, someone posted something on Ancestry and the location was Detroit. I emailed them with my father's story and they emailed me right back letting me know that the story was amazing and true!

At that moment, I realized I found my dad's family. I immediately called my dad, and he said, "Hurry up and get phone numbers! I'm going on a road trip!"His half-sister was in San Francisco, minutes from where I lived, and the half-brother was in Detroit. Since 2010, we've had lots of get-togethers and are all friends on Facebook.

My mother's family interested me, too, as my mother is 100 percent German. I was always curious to see if any other language or heritage was present in her line. Most of her family was in either Erie or Pittsburg Pennsylvania. Currently, I am researching my grand fatehr and great grand father's military records along with graves and burials of my mother's family.

I do have pictures of tombstones of most of the Klingers in my mother's line. I will try to scan and upload them and enter birth and death records onto Find A Grave's website so that others can use this information for their family research.