Howdy, y’all!

I’m Lindsay Toler, the new Associate Local Editor for Patch.com! I’ll be the one “replacing” Andrew Dana Hudson, who is jet setting around the world, and I can’t wait to get to know you and hear your stories!

A little about me: I’m originally from Dallas, Texas, so I love hot summer weather and chili con queso. I live in south St. Louis with the boyfriend and our puppy, a schnoodlehuahua (schnauzer+poodle+chihuahua) named Persie after Robin Van Persie, the Dutch soccer player.

Here are some important things about me:

• I’ve known I wanted to be a journalist since September 11, 2001.
• I worked for the Associated Press in London, where I covered terrorism and Harry Potter.
• I covered gymnastics at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games and was the first to post a video of the Opening Ceremonies from outside the Bird’s Nest.
• I used to live in Seattle, where I worked for the Seattle Times and for a small group of weekly newspapers called the Snohomish County Tribune Newspapers.
• I’m a returned Peace Corps volunteer. I served in Moldova, in between Romania and Ukraine, and taught health to 5-11^th graders.
• I’m not very good at milking cows.
• I speak fluent Romanian, although it’s getting rusty.
• I love to volunteer, and my passion is working with victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

I moved to St. Louis in September 2011, and I stalked Patch editors until they hired me a month later. For the last eight months, I’ve been working as the social media reporter, scanning Facebook, Twitter, etc. for stories we could share on our 23 sites across St. Louis.

Now, my job is a little different. I’m based in Affton-Shrewsbury, but I’ll be working all over mid-south county telling stories, finding new bloggers, hosting networking events and doing anything else I can think of!

If you have any questions, comments or story ideas for me, I’d love to hear them.

Email me at Lindsay.Toler@patch.com or follow me @StLouisLindsay.

Even if you don’t have questions, I’d love to meet you. Let’s get coffee sometime!

Stay Patchy!

Lindsay