Mae Mackey’s journey has been full of unexpected twists and turns, with game show victories and playwriting serving as signposts along the way.

Sr. Vice President of Production Management at Sun West Mortgage, in Cerritos California, Mackey started out in education. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts, she accepted a teaching position with the Los Angeles Unified School District. Teaching was not a profession in which she expected to find a home, but a mentor convinced her she would do well.

She taught high school English, special education, and “everything but math and science,” she said. She even became a dean at the school. But, six years later, the district began to make changes Mackey didn’t agree with, which led her to retire.

That’s when her travels took a new turn and she made an appearance on Hollywood Squares, a revival of the 1960s game show, which aired between 1998 and 2004. In May of 2003, Mackey spent three days on the game show, winning $51,325 in cash and prizes, including a yellow mini Cooper.

“This is for my baby,” she said. “He wants it, and his favorite color is yellow.”

As she turned the key she selected hoping it would start the vehicle, a smile spread across her face and she repeated the 10-year old’s plea, “Mama, win a car mama! Win a car!”

With the ignition purring to a start, she did.

In each episode of the game show, contestants gave a short bio about themselves. On her first day, Mackey spoke of owning “LA’s premier gospel night club.” Called The Mustard Seed, the club was open Saturdays from 8 p.m. to midnight in various rented venues, where patrons listened to fast-paced gospel music while sipping alcohol-free beverages, she told Mortgage Women Magazine.

On day two of her three-day escapade on Hollywood Squares, Mackey serenaded the crowd with a short verse from “Amazing Grace.” She recalled being nervous to belt out the tune with Gloria Estefan in the center square, but the Cuban-American pop star smiled and clapped.

Hollywood Squares wasn’t the only game show she did. Mae was also on Balderdash and auditioned for Deal or No Deal and Flip Side, she said. Casting directors for Deal or No Deal promised to call her back but never did. She still aspires to more.

“I would love to do Wheel of Fortune,” she said.

Mackey coupled her Hollywood Squares winnings with her teaching retirement money and took some time off to figure out what she really wanted to do. While pondering her next career move, she took on “another love of mine,” graphic arts and design. In her spare time, she used her talent to help friends and family. The efforts led her to a position at Goldencrest Financial, in Inglewood, California — a company that was owned by a woman who also owned a beauty salon. While she started out as marketing director, she eventually shifted to the mortgage side of the operation.

“One day she just asked me like, do you want to learn the mortgage business?” Mackey said. “And I was like, sure.”

She found the work stimulating and specifically loved what she calls the “investigative part of the business,” — reviewing documents to determine if applicants meet the criteria for loans they are seeking. When they did, she said, she would call the family into the office and pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

“I just love putting all the pieces together,” she said. “And then the cherry on the top was that loan actually closing and being able to, you know, help fulfill someone’s home ownership dream and seeing how excited people would be.”

Mackey worked for that brokerage for three years and married the owner’s son. The shop launched a career in which she has moved onward and upward, working briefly for AFN, in Glendale California and moving to QT Funding, in Quartz Hills, California, where she remained until 2007 when the market started to crash.“That was a strange time,” she said. “We went from working in this big, beautiful office building to working out of [the owner’s home] until there just weren’t any more loans … I watched everyone leave. I watched him lose a lot of things.”

Once the business finally closed, she landed a new job at Sun West Mortgage with her first day starting on her 35th birthday.

Chasing new experiences has always driven Mackey, and her mortgage career has set the stage for even more adventures. Over the years, she has traveled to Singapore and Mumbai, India, where she one day hopes to return.

Her globetrotting isn’t always about work; sometimes she’s simply chasing the next place that sparks her curiosity. Her favorite countries to visit are Croatia — which she noted is beautiful — as well as Ghana and Puerto Rico. “I love Puerto Rico so much — I’m moving there next year,” she announced.

Mackey also loves to write. Under the name Mae Lynn Lee, she has written a screenplay, which is registered with the Library of Congress and the writer’s Guild of America. Mackey said she drew inspiration from a friend and from her own childhood. Called “Sometimes Love Ain’t 50/50,” it tells the story of two sisters who fall in love with prison inmates. While they navigate through the relationships, it appears one of the men is still a con while the other has cleaned up his life. Like Mackey’s own story, however, there are a few twists. One question that arises is if the allegedly reformed convict is really walking the honest path after all.

Born in Chicago, she spent her early childhood in Baltimore and moved to LA in 1987. Her father was in prison from her infancy until she was 13.

Listening to her friend dealing with a similar situation brought back Mackey’s own memories.

“I just started talking to my mom about her relationship with my dad while he was locked up, and so I just decided to create this story,” she said.

With ideas for scripted television shows and other screenplays waking her up in the middle of the night, Mackey plans to continue writing.

“I write all of them down,” she said. “But it’s just unfortunate that I also love my nine-to-five job just as much, so I haven’t been able to put them all together.”

She recently discovered a penchant for comedy and has been writing down jokes. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll brave the stage at a comedy show some night and see if she can get some laughs … but no promises.