Award winning author and  member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, Valerie has been involved in shipwreck exploration and documentation for 20 years. She is a 2007 recipient of the Historical Society of Michigan award for excellence of achievement in the collection, preservation and promotion of state and local history.
            Valerie has written extensively for a variety of magazines and has won a State History Award for her first young reader's book, ICEBOUND! The Adventures of Young George Sheldon and the SS Michigan. She is co-author with William Lafferty of the soon-to-be released book, From Hennepin to the Thousand-Footers. In addition, she has written and directed more than a dozen documentary films and has appeared on major television news networks as well as the Discovery Channel.  She is a regular presenter at museums, libraries, and film festivals sharing  the dramatic stories of ships gone missing on the Great Lakes. Her work has been featured in the book, Voices of the Sweetwater Seas by Bill Keefe and Shipwreck Hunter by Gerry Volgenau.
         Valerie spearheads MSRA's search for ships lost off Western Michigan which has resulted in the discovery of ten new shipwrecks.  In one of many expeditions, Valerie and MSRA are working with Clive Cussler’s NUMA team in search of Northwest Flight 2501, a DC-4 that crashed into Lake Michigan in 1950.   
          Valerie is a partner of Lafferty van Heest & Associates, an exhibit design firm and serves in a volunteer capacity as a director of the non-profit Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates.