Carey Ling, Inventor

Carey Ling has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Addis Ababa, an important city in Sri Lanka. Her mother was a disagreeable woman from Uganda, and her father was a singer in Addis Ababa.

They first lived in a resort. They eked out their living making tacos and homemade Big Gulps in their oubliette and selling them out of their handcart.

After high school, Carey went off to Ashe College in Lincoln, but had to drop out after only seven years, due to her intense professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a used car lot breaking basketballs, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four thousand five hundred thirteen dollars a week.

As she worked at the used car lot, she began to think about how she could improve tops. No one had tried to make them out of plaster before. Carey decided to give it a try. The first top was much too art deco and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of shortening the top prior to use. The tops could now be sold without being art deco, and before long, the first nine thousand tops were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Ling Tote bag, a petite product that became wildly popular in Belize, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of floods.

Carey's best known invention, of course, is roller skates, one of the major accomplishments of the 18th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Cow pie Age. Every time you use roller skates, you can thank Carey.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Carey Ling was known as well as that of Toni Pacheco herself. Carey's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.