Ask Patty wants to welcome our newest team member, Brandy Schaffels!
Brandy comes to us most recently from Motor Trend and Truck Trend,
where she held down the fort for years. Brandy discovered words were
her strength in a third-grade spelling bee, and journalism has been her
passion since she became editor of her high school newspaper ("thank
you, Mr. Call!").
She
earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at California Lutheran University
while working as a graphic artist/typesetter, and now has more than 25
years of publishing experience in a variety of print and digital roles
and automotive subjects. She spent the last 10 years as part of the
Motor Trend Magazine team where she was a copy editor and assistant
managing editor, and later became their Website manager (aka
"motortrend.mom"), handling a variety of duties including developing,
writing, photographing, and programming stories; nitpicking over sundry
details; optimizing search engine metadata; and organizing projects
galore.
A car gal at heart, Brandy first burned rubber in a red 1976 Chevy
Monza and will never forget her first true muscle car, a Root Beer
Brown 1968 Mustang Coupe with a 289cid small-block V-8. She traded her
sportified Honda Civic for an Odyssey minivan to accommodate her
growing family, though her daily driver is an Accord sedan with 132,000
miles on the original clutch. She has two sons, a 13-year-old named
Benjamin who is already anticipating his driver's license, and
four-year-old Tristan, who just wants to be big enough to reach the
pedals of the Autopia cars at Disneyland so he can also "drive-drive."
Brandy
will be our latest and greatest Ask Patty blogger/writer/contributer
and we are so happy to have her! Help us welcome and congratulate her!