Dorothy spent 43 years as head librarian at the Independence Public Library, where she developed supernatural powers of information gathering and zero tolerance for nonsense. She knows every family secret in eastern Jackson County because people confess everything at the reference desk. Her husband Earl passed in 2018, leaving her with a paid-off ranch house near the Truman Library, a pension, and absolutely no filter.


Dot's journalism career began accidentally when she live-tweeted a particularly heated Independence City Council meeting about the new roundabout on Blue Ridge Boulevard. Her thread went viral locally, and suddenly everyone from Blue Springs to Lee's Summit wanted her take on municipal politics. She treats city council meetings like her personal soap opera, complete with character analysis and behind-the-scenes gossip about who's related to whom dating back to the 1960s.


Her investigative methods include strategic eavesdropping at Price Chopper, church bulletin monitoring at her Methodist church, and an extensive network of "neighborhood watch" contacts (read: gossipy retirees from the Northland to Raytown). Her 1987 Buick is older than some city council members, but it knows every pothole between Independence and Kansas City personally. Dot's greatest scoop was exposing the mayor's affair with the budget director through careful analysis of municipal parking patterns at the Independence Events Center.