Robin Shepper/Photo Courtesy
When Robin Shepper’s second child was little, she felt that all she was doing was changing diapers and speaking in baby language.
“I needed intellectual stimulation,” she said.
That led her to a creative writing course, where she wrote several short stories about her life. She is what she calls “origin her story.” When Shepherd shared those stories with her friends, they repeatedly encouraged her to elaborate them in her book.
During the early stay-at-home period of the pandemic, Shepper compiled these stories into a memoir, which he planned to publish on April 18.
Shepper’s book Finding My Way: A Memoir of Family, Identity and Political Ambition A lifelong search for the father she never knew, documenting everything that happened along the way. This includes her job in the presidential campaign, helping plan several Olympics, and her job in the White House.
In this book, Schepper hopes to show that everyone has obstacles that must be overcome, even if they are not immediately apparent.
“People I meet now know my history working in the White House, and they look at me with my blonde hair and blue eyes and say, ‘Oh, you’ve probably had a fascinating life. “My driving force[for this book]was that we are all traumatized in one way or another. We believe that the more we fit together, the more fulfilling life we can have.”
Shepper was born in New York City in the 1960s to a Pan American flight attendant mother. She didn’t learn English until kindergarten, but was emancipated at age 15, worked as a nanny to earn a living, and just started accepting Catholics like her after John F. Kennedy was elected president. won a scholarship to a prestigious girls’ school.
Robin Shepper/Photo Courtesy
She worked as a pre-organizer for the 1988 Dick Geffard and 1992 Bill Clinton presidential campaigns, and eventually served as Washington State Speaker in the 1996 Clinton campaign.
At the turn of the century, Shepar stepped away from politics for a while, starting with roles like an internship in Sydney and eventually helping with the planning of several Olympic Games. Prior to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Schepper traveled between Greece and Washington, D.C., where he lived, every two weeks.
When the torch was extinguished at these games, she was seriously involved in her adopted children’s school and devoted much of her time to volunteer work. led her to apply for the leadership of The initiative had a desk in the East Her Wing of the White House.
After serving a year in that role, Shepherd continued working in the policy field on food and nutrition, taking her to military bases where 1950s liver and onion recipes were still a staple.
When she ran out of money to do so, she shifted her focus to local work in her native Yampa Valley. When her pandemic began, she thought it was only temporary and enlisted to help with communications for Root County.
“Two years later,” Schepper said with a laugh.
The book includes aspects of her life that Shepper said were difficult to write about, including how she was sexually harassed and assaulted while working in the male-dominated political scene of the 1980s and 1990s. Schepper said she wants women, especially young women, to read the book.
At its heart is finding her biological father and uncovering the half-truth she grew up hearing about who she was.
“I wanted transparency in my family because no one was telling me the truth about who my father was,” Shepherd said. …I think the truth and providing voters with information and education is just as important as knowing who your family is.”
“When I was a kid, I was told I didn’t care and I wanted to make an impact. … I was a bastard kid,” Schepper continued. “I wanted to prove everyone wrong.”
Schepper’s book is currently on presale ahead of its April release. Secluded bookstores and Steamboat Sotheby’s will host an autograph session with Shepper after the book launches on May 11th.
To contact Dylan Anderson, call 970-871-4247 or email danderson@SteamboatPilot.com.