Career
A brief look at the roles, teams, and milestones that have shaped my path so far.
Infantryman / Squad Leader
Enlisted at eighteen and became one of the first women to serve in the Infantry. The attention was immediate and total — every drill, every ruck march, and every range day came with a crowd of infantrymen who had never trained alongside someone like her. At first it was curiosity; then it became rivalry, then grudging respect, and underneath all of it a current of crushes that ran both ways. Some of the guys made excuses to be on her detail; a few made it obvious they were hoping she noticed. She noticed sometimes, and the feeling was mutual often enough to make the barracks feel like a high school hallway with better haircuts. Commanders saw the spotlight and leaned into it, putting her on the fastest promotion tracks and the toughest schools to prove the program could work. She made E-5 in record time, not because she asked for special treatment, but because she was watched so closely that every good day became a headline and every mistake would have ended the experiment. The infantry taught her how to lead under pressure, how to turn spectacle into standard, and how to outwork a room full of people waiting for her to fail.
Founder / Head Kennel Keeper
After the Army, life took a turn no one expected. Leon answered a classified ad for a handyman on a small ranch outside Boulder and found an elderly woman named Dorothy living alone with twenty-seven poodles, a leaking roof, and no next of kin. She was dying, quietly and stubbornly, and the dogs were one missed meal away from the county shelter. Leon moved into the guest room, fixed the roof, and spent Dorothy's last eighteen months keeping her comfortable and the dogs fed. On the morning she passed, she signed the deed over with a shaky hand and one condition: the poodles stayed together. Today Rainbow Poodle Ranch is still that promise kept. Leon raises happy, well-loved poodles and places them, almost exclusively, with gay couples and LGBTQ+ families who understand what it means to build a home on your own terms. The ranch runs on coffee, pride flags, and the belief that every creature deserves to land somewhere soft.