Born and Raised in MN 

My Early Life & Passion for Small Business

My first job was at Tonto’s Taco Shoppe in Minnetonka when I was 16. I loved having a job and worked there for six years, while I went to college. I also waitressed at The Albatross (a college bar in Mankato), The Circle Inn in North Mankato, and The Mexican Village. When Rocky Rococo’s, a pizza franchise, opened up in Mankato, I applied for a job. I was hired to be a prep cook in the kitchen and after a short time, I became an assistant manager. The company was trying to expand in different locations, so when they opened a store in Albert Lea, I offered to move there as one of the three managers. I was transferred me back to the Mankato location, where I was eventually laid off due to the company’s financial problems.

In the meantime, my parents had opened up two dry cleaning locations (Eden Prairie and Burnsville) in 1986. The manager had quit so my dad asked me to help them out since I was unemployed. I learned all aspects of the business from spotting, pressing, and running the machines and the boiler, as well as managing employees. If I don’t say so myself, I was one of the best spotters in the Twin Cities! The name of our company was Best Cleaners and they expanded many times and eventually sold the business in 2021 after almost 35 years. My dad has been a small business owner pretty much my whole life, so owning my own business was in my blood. He sold real estate, owned a liquor store, a laundromat, multiple self-serve car washes, and a complex that had a self-serve car wash, automatic car wash, laundromat, and dry cleaning businesses all in one building. He and my mom currently own Anytime Storage in Mankato, which I have managed since 2009.

Dave Vosburg and I were married in 1996 by the ocean on the North Shore of Hawaii. He grew up in Mankato so we decided to make Mankato our home. I was not interested in working for someone else, so I got my real estate license in 1997. While working for my 3rd real estate brokerage, our Broker was killed in a car accident which caused another agent and I to leave and start our own company in 2004. We ended up buying the Realty Executives franchise and at one time had 28 agents. My business partner wanted to move to Seattle, so in 2007, I bought her out and became the sole owner of Realty Executives River Valley. I’m a very goal-driven person, so I wanted to grow my real estate brokerage to over 30 agents while offering the best commission plans and office space in the market. I bought a chunk of land behind DeGrood’s and started working on a floor plan for an office building with more than 6,500 sq. feet. Construction started in 2008 and we moved in December with 16 agents. We all know what happened in 2008 and 2009 – I was doomed to fail the day I moved into the new office. I started renting offices to other businesses – I was the first location in Mankato to have shared spaces for businesses. This wasn’t enough to save the building. This was probably the lowest point in my life. I felt like a complete failure and lost all of my retirement savings and then some, plus almost lost my marriage. Dave and I separated in 2014, although we never divorced. We reconciled in 2018. We never did have children, mainly because I worked so much and never slowed down. Time just went too fast!

I ended up starting over again with my sister, Pam, and I as the only ones in the office. She worked for me for 12 years, as an office admin and then a buyer’s agent, eventually moving to the Twin Cities to be closer to our parents. In 2017, I decided to rebrand and name the company Home Run Realty. I have seven other agents, most of them part-time. I have managed Anytime Storage for my parents since 2009. I’m a sales rep Southern Minnesota Wellness, which sells home health technology products and supplements . Abby Matzke of New Song Wellness and I partnered together to start Southern Minnesota Thermography which is a lab that provides radiation free breast and body scanning. We are proud to offer this in the Mankato area and travel to other areas in the state.

Why I Decided to Run for
the House of Representatives

I am worried about the direction this state is headed. Even though I do not have children, I have nieces and nephews and I want to help make this state a better place for them. I never had much interest in politics, although I have always been a Republican, as are my parents and siblings. My husband was a staunch Democrat, however he feels the Democrat party has changed completely over the last few years, and he now considers himself a Republican.

I started paying close attention to what was going on in the state and country in 2020. I feel Covid-19 was mismanaged in so many ways and the George Floyd riots got me fired up so I started attending some political events. As a business owner, I was angered at how the Governor decided which businesses could be open and which ones had to close their doors. The Democrats kept allowing him to renew his emergency powers for up to 18 months, even though he stated it would only be two weeks, so we could “slow the spread.” Vaccine mandates for state employees and threatening termination if they did not comply was unconstitutional. Inflation and gas prices spiraled out of control. Minnesota had a huge surplus in 2023 and the Democrats squandered it away, instead of giving it back to the taxpayers and/or reducing taxes overall. Instead they increased the budget by 40 percent!

I often hear people say they want to move out of state because they are tired of paying some of the highest taxes in the nation and because we are one of the few that tax social security. School choice and having the tax dollars follow their children is a hot topic, plus parents want to be more in control of what their kids are being taught. Our schools are facing significant challenges, from escalating violence to dwindling test scores. Eight years ago Mankato West was in the top 1,000 nationally, now they sit at 2,779 and Mankato East is at 3,267 nationally. We have to do better. We clearly need proactive solutions that rely on effective legislation and adequate funding. Election integrity is another concern of mine – we need to make it easy to vote, yet hard to cheat. We need people to represent us with common sense and I promise to legislate that way. I have always strived to be a critical thinker and to run my business and personal life with integrity and ethics. I can listen to both sides and am a good negotiator after 27 years of negotiating home sales between buyers and sellers. I am prepared for what this job entails and have great agents, employees, and business partners willing to help cover for my business when I win.