Karen Cardoza was born and raised in Palo Alto, California. In 1985, she moved to Utah to attend Brigham Young University where she received a bachelor’s degree in Nursing. Currently, Karen lives in Springville with her sweet arthritic 15-year-old kitty by the name of Trixie.
For the last 30 years, she has worked at Utah Valley Hospital as a Labor and Delivery nurse. Besides working in Labor and Delivery, Karen is also an Outreach Educator which requires her to travel to small rural hospitals in the state to teach doctors and nurses High Risk Obstetrics and Neonatal Resuscitation.
Karen has a love of humanitarian service, which has been demonstrated by her being involved with the Hirsche Smiles Foundation since 2002. This is an organization that travels mainly to Guatemala to operate on children who have been born with cleft lip, cleft palate and ear deformities. She is fluent in Spanish and acts as the pre-op nurse and has gone on over 30 trips since joining this foundation. She also has been involved with Latter-Day Saint Charities since 2007 and has traveled to many South American Countries teaching programs such as Neonatal Resuscitation, Helping Babies Breath and Helping Mothers Survive.
The medical field is not her only source of employment, for Karen is a licensed Aqua Zumba instructor and has taught this group fitness format since 2017. She had to take a break from teaching in early 2024 due to a knee injury, but is currently looking to start teaching again. She finds this form of exercise very rewarding on many levels.
Karen loves to travel. She jokingly admits that since the early 2000’s she has always had a future plane ticket in her hand. It was only during the COVID-19 pandemic that she had to take a two month break from possessing a plane ticket. Karen’s friends know her as a quintessential Disney Adult. If you ask her which is her favorite Disney Resort, she would smile and say… “How can you choose between your children which is the favorite?” But when it comes down to it, Disneyland is her favorite park, Disneyland Paris has her favorite Castle, People Mover is her favorite ride and Frozen Sing-Along is her favorite show. Karen loves to stay updated on what is termed “park science” and can tell you the latest park construction updates, park hacks and park snacks. She has been to Disneyland twice this year, and has a “few” more trips planned for the rest of the year.
Karen’s journey into puzzling started at the end of 2024 during the Christmas Holiday season when she didn’t want to buy another chocolate advent calendar so she bought a puzzle advent calendar instead. What she discovered was that putting a few pieces together after coming home from a stressful day at the hospital worked miracles. She found it a great way to unwind and process the events of the day. She found that making something out of chaos is highly therapeutic.
It was because of Karen’s affinity of watching YouTube for Disney content and her newly found interest in puzzles that the dreaded YouTube algorithm caught up with her and in early January 2025 her first Karen Puzzles video came across her phone as a potential viewing option. How could she not resist? Someone with her same name that did puzzles. It was there that a whole new world opened up to her. Karen considers herself a novice in puzzle competitions, for she has only competed in two bar competitions and one online competition. She is looking forward to an up-and-coming trip to St. Paul, Minnesota in August to do a Sarah Schuler bar competition with a friend of hers who lives out there. She is also planning on going to Nationals next year in Atlanta to be a volunteer.
Karen is so grateful to be welcomed so warmly into the puzzling community and looks forward to improving her skills and getting to know everyone better.
Utah Jigsaw Puzzle Association 