Theresa Katalinas, Patch Staff

Email: Theresa.Katalinas@Patch.com Phone: 215-350-4833 Hometown: Lancaster, PA Birthday: April 1 - no foolin'

Theresa Katalinas credits her high school English and Journalism teacher, Mary Gildea, with helping to foster a love of writing and reporting. A journalist during a time when it was unacceptable for women to write anything other than features and obituaries, Mrs. Gildea empowered Theresa to not only break, but shatter that glass ceiling.

Theresa broke into journalism during the latter part of her college career at Millersville University, where she majored in English and Print Journalism. Long nights after class found her hunched over a desk, taking box scores and paginating sports scoreboard pages at her hometown newspaper, the Intelligencer Journal, in Lancaster Pa., the same newspaper where Mrs. Gildea had worked some 20 years before. Every chance she had, Theresa also penned music profiles for a monthly entertainment publication, Fly Magazine, as well as her college newspaper, the Snapper. When an internship opened in the Intell's newsroom, Theresa left her sports post for a higher calling: writing news stories. 

Following her internship and college graduation, Theresa worked as a reporter at two southern New Jersey dailies. And, no matter where her reporting career takes her, Theresa will always smile fondly upon her time at the Gloucester County Times, where she met and fell in love with her husband, Mark. An award-winning graphic artist and copydesk editor, Mark mentored Theresa in page design and editing. And, although it wasn't part of his job description, the ever-jovial Mark also knew just how to make Theresa, a then-new editor, smile.

In 2005, Theresa moved to Bucks County to cover municipal government for the Bucks County Courier Times. She has since relocated to Eastern Montgomery County, where she lives with Mark, their 1-year-old daughter, Hannah and their two long-haired Himalayan cats, Tara and Cooper.

In her free time (as if a baby would allow for that), Theresa enjoys going to see live music and scrapbooking all of the special moments, milestones and toothy smiles of her pride and joy's life.

Your Beliefs At Patch, we promise always to report the facts as objectively as possible and otherwise adhere to the principles of good journalism. However, we also acknowledge that true impartiality is impossible because human beings have beliefs. So in the spirit of simple honesty, our policy is to encourage our editors to reveal their beliefs to the extent they feel comfortable. This disclosure is not a license for you to inject your beliefs into stories or to dictate coverage according to them. In fact, the intent is the opposite: we hope that the knowledge that your beliefs are on the record will cause you to be ever mindful to write, report and edit in a fair, balanced way. And if you ever see evidence that we failed in this mission, please let us know. Politics How would you describe your political beliefs?

I am truly a moderate. It really depends on the issue whether I lean to the right or the left.

Are you registered with a certain party?

I am a registered Democrat, although I do not always vote for Democrats. I believe in voting for the person rather than the party.

Religion How religious would you consider yourself? (casual, observant, devout, non religious)

I think I fall into the "non-religious" category. I attended Catholic school as a child, but do not necessarily agree with all of the beliefs of the Catholic church. I have not found a religion that I can totally identify with.

Local Hot-Button Issues What do you think are the most important issues facing the community?

I think redevelopment of the Willow Grove Naval Air Station after the military leaves in 2011 is definitely a hot-button issue and will be for some time as interested parties put forth their ideas for the roughly 900 acres.

Where do you stand on this issue?

As a resident neighboring the sprawling air base, I think it's important to be open-minded about the redevelopment proposals as they are submitted. Although we all may have ideas about what would work best on the site, not everything may be feasible. And, most importantly, some sort of development on the site is far better than such a large piece of property - roughly 8 percent of Horsham Township - sitting vacant.