User:VEP-BSN,RN,PHN

Hello, you've found the page of Vance Purcell. I am 31 years old, and live in the Sacramento region of Northern California. I've lived (what I believe to be) an interesting and wide-ranging life, giving me a lot of knowledge and experience in various areas. I spent 1 1/2 years in the California Army National Guard and 6 years in the active US Army, including my final assignment working as the ANCOIC of Protocol, the Executive Administrative Assistant to the USMA MACOM Command Sergeant Major and a driver for the General Staff at the United Stated Military Academy at West Point. I am a service connected disabled veteran. I have an Associates Degree of General Studies from Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs, CO. I nearly completed a BA in Criminal Justice when injuries forced me to re-think my career path. After I left the Army, I went back to school and received a BS in Nursing, and am currently a practicing RN in the Sacramento region. I am licensed by the State of California as a Registered Nurse and as a Public Health Nurse. In 2007, I received the Red Cross Hometown Hero award.

I have worked in journalism long ago, writing professionally for city and county newspapers while still in high school, as well as for the high school paper. Long ago, soccer was my passion, and I both played and then eventually transitioned into being a referee, for which I traveled around the Western US, was named the Northern California Youth Referee of the Year once, and worked at the US Olympic Development Camp in Larime, WY in 1998. I coached youth soccer in Colorado Springs as a volunteer with AYSO despite not having children of my own (at the time). Unfortunately, my injuries resulted in giving up that passion.

I enjoy learning, and regularly pull out obscure facts from my days as a young child spent reading random pages of the family copy of Encyclopedia Brittanica. Just this past week, while walking along a creek in the Sacramento region with my wife and huskies, we realized that salmon spawned in this small creek, and I was able to explain the spawning process to my wife. This was a nugget of information I can only attribute to those days spent reading from the encyclopedia (or from National Geographic or some other source). Just out of curiosity, I checked the information I gave my wife on Wikipedia, and found out I was right!

I hope that I may be able to provide even a sliver of assistance in making Wikipedia be for my son (who is 3 months old now) be what Encyclopedia Brittanica was for me all those years ago!