Started Skydiving on April 24th, 1999 (which you will find tattooed on her butt) at Skydive Toledo in Washington State. This was just to be a one-time thing that she had organized with 12 of her friends (Tandem Jumps). As the group organizer she was the first of the group to do a Tandem. Her Tandem Master Archie got her all hooked up and ready to go. When to door was opened “Tami let out the loudest scream Archie has ever heard”. To make things worse as soon as Archie put her in the door and started the count Tami grabbed the closest thing she could reach. She grabbed the door with her right hand and the pilots arm with her left. After relentless shaking, Archie and the pilot gets her hands back on the harness and off they go. The camera is witness to a bloodcurdling scream that once in the relative wind turned into the biggest freefall smile ever. As soon as Archie and Tami landed all she could think about was “I am hooked and I must do this again”! Tami did do another Tandem that same day. Two weeks later she returned back to the DZ for her Static Line FJC. Tami obviously fell in love with Skydiving the instant she left the plane (and that wasn’t an easy task). Tami is a strong believer that the people at Skydive Toledo also played a big part in her love of the sport “Thanks so much DZO’s Mike Gauger, Donna Johnson and Tandem Instructor Archie and all the Toledo-ites”.

Tami’s career has been Manufacturing Engineering. She worked for Fujitsu Computer Products of America for 10 years then move on to a Fortune 500 Company called InFocus. She worked very hard long hours for many years but truly loved her work. She specialized in DFM (design for manufacturability) as well as new product introduction. Suddenly a new world outside of work has been introduced and her free time became very important to her (her manager and good friend Papa Teeter was convinced that Tami was burned out and went completely over the edge). In December of 1999 she attended her first Boogies. She went to Coolidge Arizona (which was then Mike Mullins's place) and also to the Eloy Y2K Holiday Boogie. Tami had a blast at these boogies and realized AZ was a great place to find refuge from the cloudy wet winters of Washington. Coolidge was her DZ of choice because of the friendly people. It was there that she met Scotty Carbone. Scotty provided Tami with coaching and got her in on her first functional RW big-way skydives. Needless to say, in the months to follow she really built up her frequent flyer miles flying from Oregon to Arizona for long weekends. Her jump numbers also increased and currently (in 2004) has approximately 1,000 skydives.

In August of 2000 Tami was faced with making one of the hardest and scariest decisions in her life. She was tossing around the idea of leaving her long-standing Engineering position for a year of travel and skydiving (was only supposed be for a year). Tami did leave her Engineering job and has since teamed up with Scotty Carbone. Tami and Scotty were married on August 9, 2002 at the W.F.F.C. and they now own and operate the Cut-Away Café and Flare-Wear together.