Blakinger and Ladwig won first place in the 2000 and 2001 competitions at the South Atlantic Regional Championships for the novice pairs division, leading her to being named to the USFSA Scholastic Honors team that same year.

When the impact her eating disorder was having on her physical and mental health was discovered, she began therapy during her sophomore year of high school, which continued through her participation in the 2001 national.

[5] Following conflict with her parents after her return to Pennsylvania at the end of the summer, she ran away from home days after the start of her senior year of high school.

Living among other homeless people in both Lancaster and Boston, she turned to sex work to support her drug addiction, and later recounted several instances of being raped, including once at knifepoint.

[1] After high school, she attended Rutgers University, where she made money to pay for tuition by working at a strip club and escort agency, which allowed her to rent an apartment of her own.

[1] Despite this, she maintained a perfect grade point average at Rutgers, and was named to the dean's list in 2002, receiving the First Year Student's Award for academic excellence, and was nominated for the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.

Her professors noted that, while they suspected she was doing drugs and dealing with other problems, her high intelligence and outstanding work in her classes obscured anyone from actively questioning her.

[9][1] While working at the New York Daily News, she reported on a sexual assault of a female inmate at Rikers Island that resulted in the charging and subsequent conviction of a corrections officer.

[5] In 2016, she became a criminal justice reporter for the Houston Chronicle, where she covered the treatment of prisoners and the issue of people incarcerated with drug addictions and mental illness.

[10] Her reporting contributed to several reforms to Texas prison policies, including allowing inmates lacking teeth to have their dentures 3D printed.

A May 2020 article she wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States on prisons giving dramatically worsened food to inmates resulted in vegetables being served again.