Following graduation, Katherine decided to join the Army. She flew to Boise to begin the enlistment process. Then she flew to Hawaii where she spent the next three months vacationing. At the end of September she returned to Boise to complete the enlistment process and was officially sworn in as a United States Army soldier. She was then promptly flown to Atlanta, Georgia where she boarded an Army bus for Fort McClellan, Alabama where she spent the next several weeks in hot and humid weather in a grueling basic training program.

Upon successful completion of Basic Training she was then transferred to the Naval Base in Pensacola, Florida Cory Station, where she completed her training for her MOS 05K (later changed to 98K), which required a Top Secret Security Clearance. She excelled in the academic portion of the training, but had some difficulty passing the higher speeds of Morse Code, but finally graduated.

Her first duty station was at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland where she given her second promotion to PFC. She worked at NSA before finally being sent to her second duty station in Augsburg, Germany. There she received her next promotion to Specialist and received the Good Conduct Medal. She remained in Germany until her four year enlistment ended, with an Honorable Discharge.

She opted to stay in Germany for another year as a civilian. The time spent in Germany was between 1985-1988. This was when Germany was still divided into East and West Germany by a wall in the Cold War. West Germany was very affluent at that time and the American dollar was very strong buying upwards of three Duetschmarks per dollar. It was not until returning to the States that the wall dividing Germany finally came down in 1989. It was a bittersweet moment for Germany.

Katherine began college upon her return. She earned her AA in General Studies, with a concentration in Psychology and graduated magna cum laude in 1993 and became a member of Phi Theta Kappa. Then she earned her BS degree in Speech and Hearing Therapy and graduated with honors in 1998. At that time she also earned three minors: psychology, linguistics, and women's studies. Then she earned her MA in Speech-Language Pathology in 2003. She worked as an SLP in a nursing home and independent living facility, working with patients suffering from strokes and dementia and other maladies. This work proved to be unrewarding. She then decided to work in public schools with kids having speech and language delays and difficulties. This work was very rewarding.