Originally from Chicago, Carolyne relocated to California in January 1970. After a thirty-year career in local government, she retired from the City and County of San Francisco in April 2007. During the same amount of time, not shy with a microphone and following a life-long dream, she became a successful singer, working the San Francisco Bay area and northern California hotels and country clubs’ circuits throughout the 1980s; she still makes vocal appearances here and there.
In 2012, she self-published her first novel, Of Noble Character. While it is not a Bible story, it is loosely based on the Genesis account of Abraham and Sarah. The story depicts the life of an Eastern European family over one hundred and fifty years, from Germany to America, with San Francisco as the main backdrop. In 2020, she released a 30,000-word second edition of the story.
In 2017, she founded and served as CEO of the Sacramento Jazz Cooperative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving classic jazz as a cultural American art form. The organization officially dissolved in early 2022.
Discovering some unknown facts about her family’s roots, she began writing about her life. Initially, she writes that she started the story to better help her son understand his roots, but she admits that in the process, she came to better understand herself as her journey began to unfold chapter after chapter. And she has some story to tell.
In March 2021, after fifty-four years as a Californian, she relocated to the place of her familial roots, a place she now calls home. She lives just outside Savannah, Georgia, with her miniature Poodle, Cooper, and released her historical autobiography, Lark’s Flight, that same year.