Growing up at the other end of Route 12 in Chenango Bridge, this local mortgage broker says she has seen life change before her eyes and in turn has learned many lessons along the way.

After graduating from Chenango Valley high school, Cathy Robinson got married at age 19 and began her family. By the age of 21, Robinson says she faced one of the first experiences that would refocus and change her life forever. “I became a single parent,” she said.

Raising a child on her own, Robinson says, was not always easy. “Sometimes I worked two or three jobs at one time,” she said, trying to do whatever she could not to become a statistic, and to teach her daughter how to be a strong woman.

By the time Robinson was 26, she decided she wanted to work in the mortgage business and entered the field. Two years later, Robinson started serving Chenango County and immediately realized how much she liked the area. By 2001, Robinson began operating a branch office of Sun Mortgage Company on Mechanic Street in Norwich and moved to Oxford from Binghamton where she had been commuting to work. “I decided to make my home in Chenango County,” she said.