Patti grew up in Overland Park, Kan., and is the only member of her family to leave the greater Kansas City area. She worked at the Lawrence Journal-World and the Olathe (Kan.) Daily News before heading West in the fall of 1985. She has covered everything from trapping snapping turtles to Major League Baseball and the NFL, and among her career highlights are covering the World Series in Denver and photographing a Kansas-Kentucky basketball game, sitting on the sideline of Naismith Court at Allen Fieldhouse.