Ann was born in Massachusetts in the 1950’s to an Irish/Italian family. Her father was a fireman. Ann was educated in all girl Catholic schools, and even considered entering a convent, but her life took a different turn and she was married and starting to have her three children by the time she was twenty. Her education continued at Bryant College until the fall of 1972 when Todd was first diagnosed with cancer. He would go on to have cancer nine times before the age of ten and be subjected to extensive chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Within a month of graduating from high school, Ann was introduced to the recreational use of marijuana. She had been diagnosed in 1967 with depression, but was not yet aware of the medicinal potential of cannabis. "I'd like to say I noticed the curative effects immediately, but that would not be true. I did not smoke regularly, but my husband and I always had a bag of pot in the house. When my depression and the accompanying panic attacks would flare up, he would make me sit, drink a cup of tea and smoke a joint. With just a few tokes, the panic would subside and the psychic pain of the depression would lessen enough to be bearable." Todd however caught on by age four. Seeing his mom depressed one day, he went into his parent’s bedroom, got the stash, and "came into the living room carefully carrying the box like the magi bearing gifts."

The decision to give marijuana to a nine-year-old was hard, but helplessly watching Todd’s suffering was harder. One afternoon in a hospital waiting room, she saw a copy of Good Housekeeping with an item about marijuana being used for glaucoma and terminal cancer patients in the Family Doctor column, and the thought of alleviating his suffering with marijuana stuck in her mind. She conferred with friends and family and struggled with the decision, but finally gave Todd his first joint. He smoked about a third of it before letting it go out. That night he ate dinner with the rest of the family in good spirits and without vomiting or moaning in pain. The next day at the hospital, Ann told several doctors and nurses. "They dropped their heads, exchanged glances and seemed at a loss for words. They KNEW. They KNEW it WORKED. They ALL KNEW. But, they could say nothing because of the War on SOME Drugs. They could prescribe Morphine for my nine-year-old son, but they could not utter a word about a benign, ancient herb."