About the Author

Michelle Mears has a degree in communications and a love for our military. Michelle’s involvement in the armed forces began in college after bringing home a few pamphlets from various branches. Her father a helicopter pilot in Vietnam asked if she was planning to join, she said she didn’t know and then her dad said the unexpected, “Why not? Go for it.” Michelle got recommended to Officer Candidate School for the USMC by an Ohio Congressman while in college and went to boot camp in Quantico. However, plans changed and she ended up working as a journalist, while following and supporting her then husband's career in the USMC. Prior to coming to Southern California Michelle worked as a news reporter for a military news station at the Fort Benning Army base in Georgia. In 2000 while stationed at Camp Pendleton she worked a television reporter for a small station in Northern San Diego that aired a segment on a local CNN station every half hour and as a newspaper reporter for a popular weekly Northern San Diego paper called The Coast News. Michelle became the newspapers military reporter after the attacks on 9/11. She was eight months pregnant, a husband deployed and challenged by editors to stay fair and balanced in her reporting on the terrorist attacks and war from home. Michelle has continued to cover local politics and military news in Southern California for various news outlets as a freelancer. She is also the publisher of her own community-focused online and print magazine in Southwest Riverside County, a conservative, military supportive community. She believes in preserving the constitution and has been taking a series of gun education classes with her almost 15-year old son. Besides being a journalist Michelle’s greatest love is her son who also plans to join the United States Marine Corps after college.