Patience, hard work pay off for new CPA Frock, 53

member spotlight

Deborah Frock
Villa Julie graduate / new CPA

By Bill Sheridan
MACPA Electronic Communications Manager

Deborah Frock waited longer than most CPAs to earn her license.

About 30 years longer.

The 53-year-old Phoenix resident passed the CPA exam in May, fulfilling a dream that survived more than three decades, two college degrees, two marriages, two children and a whole lot of perseverance.

"When I looked (on the MACPA Web site) and saw that I had passed, I just started screaming," Frock said. "Unless you've taken the exam, you can't imagine the relief and excitement to find out you have passed. Plus, I'm 53. As you get older, it's a little harder to hit those goals because you have more going on in your life."

Frock's unlikely journey began with her graduation from Dulaney Senior High School in 1967. She had hoped to immediately pursue an accounting degree. Instead, she met unexpected resistance.

"In the 1960s, that was not a profession that women were encouraged to go into," she said. "People said, 'No, you should be a teacher or a secretary."

Frock listened, and in 1969 she earned an associate's degree from Villa Julie and went to work as a medical secretary. Three years later Frock, now married, whetted her accounting appetite when she began keeping the books at Pimlico Key Service, a family business owned by her mother and brother.

Time passed.

In the mid-1980s, she decided Pimlico Key Service needed a technology upgrade, so she returned to Villa Julie to take IT classes at night -- all while continuing to work full time, enduring a divorce and raising her children. In 1987, though, her career path was diverted again when she remarried.

"I decided that blending a new family with going to school and working full time probably was not a smart idea," she said, "so I took a few years off to settle the family situation."

Ten years later, the time seemed right to give accounting another go. Frock enrolled at Villa Julie yet again, this time with 65 credits to her name from classes she took in the 1960s and '80s. Her ultimate goal — a bachelor's degree in accounting.

She started with cost accounting "and absolutely loved it." Then she moved on to algebra and statistics, and she loved those courses, too. Finally, she went to see Lynn Duncan, whom Frock describes as "the hardest (accounting) professor Villa Julie has." Duncan mapped out a track of courses for Frock, who spent the next four years — summers included — pursuing her dream. She continued to work full time ... and taught a youth choir at her church ... and helped her family move into a newly built home.

"It was a busy few years," she understated.

Payback came when she graduated in May 2001, but that turned out to be just the first step. She took the CPA exam in November 2001 and passed three of the four parts, then returned in May to pass the auditing section.

Just like that, her dream was fulfilled.

Oh, there is still work to be done. Figuring out how she wants to use her license is the first task at hand, though previous experience with Varanko & Black and Michael Rusk has given her a few ideas.

Then there's the CPE requirement that comes with a CPA license, but Frock can't wait to get started on that, either. "How nice to be in a profession where you can learn something new all the time," she said.

Her most important task, though, might be one she didn't expect -- serving as a role model for older and younger CPA candidates alike. More likely than not, her message would be: If I can do it, so can you.

And for the profession's naysayers, with their negative stereotypes and scandal-tainted views of CPAs, she has a message as well.

"Most people look at CPAs and say, 'They're so dull. All they do is sit in an office and crunch numbers.' But CPAs are more than that," Frock said. "They are puzzle-builders. They look at all the pieces and determine if it's a bad puzzle or what you need to complete the picture. They're not dull by any stretch of the imagination."

And the scandals?

"They're not anything to be scared about," she said. "If you can keep your integrity and you really believe in the ethical procedures, you'll find that accounting is a really exciting profession to be in."

Contact this Author: < William Sheridan > bill@macpa.org

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