[4] Grimes graduated magna cum laude from the University of Arizona in Tucson with a bachelor's degree in Fine Art (painting) in 1997 and moved to Northern California.
Although she never played sports outside of high school PE,[4] she retained fond memories of roller derby, and signed up for the mailing list for the Bay City Bombers, a surviving banked track league, albeit one with no scheduled games.
[3] While Grimes spent some time working as an artist in San Francisco, California, she moved back to Arizona around the turn of the millennium.
[2] She recruited skaters through local advertisements, and did not initially have a clear plan as to how the league would train or play, instead expecting that the team would work out these things together, an approach inspired by her background in the punk movement.
They also organized the first Rollercon, a five-day event based around roller derby, which included a convention, bouts, and live music, Pankin attributing the initial appeal of the revived sport to the punk movement.