While at UF, she was a member of Student Senate, served on the O'Connell Center Board of Managers, Chaired the Affairs & Ethics Committee, and was a graduate teaching assistant.

[2] In 1985 she married Mark Fisher, an aide to United States Senator Lawton Chiles, a Democrat, and in 1986 the couple moved to Lakeland, Florida.

She finished her Master of Arts degree in mass communications during 1987, divorced her first husband in 1988, and decided to become active in Republican politics.

Dockery dropped out of the race when it became clear that she would be unable to run a competitive campaign against Rick Scott, who spent nearly $50 million of his own money to secure a bitterly fought Republican primary victory.

Term limits prohibited Dockery from running for senate re-election in 2012, so when she was asked to write a column for the political discourse website Florida Voices to share her insights of Florida politics during her last year as a senator, she agreed.