My 15-year-old daughter Grace is quite an artist. Here is her paper doll tribute to our beloved Secret Lifer Rachel Collins/MsChif. Cool Secret Life paper dolls by Grace Miller.

Science is no easy field to work in, and it takes a lot of guts to stick with it. Luckily for Rachel Collins, she’s 100% guts. Not only does she juggle two vastly different lives, but she dominates in both science and in wrestling. Laura learns to bring it from “deep down inside”!

And it turns out the line between Rachel and MsChif is pretty blurred—she happily went to the airport still in her wrestling garb after our interview with her, and she totally delighted in all the looks she got.

Check out the video in the player of Rachel teaching me a thing or two about unleashing my own inner MsChif.

We try to stay in touch with our subjects even after they’ve appeared here on “Secret Life.” And we love to hear about the feedback they get from our audience.

YOU WILL LOVE SCIENCE!!! But this is the best one yet.

I was recently writing back and forth with Rachel Collins, our very favorite microbiologist/professional wrestler, and here’s a bit of her email:

“I don’t recall if I told you this one or not. I was on a Ring of Honor TV taping, and I got a ‘we love science’ chant from the crowd!”

She got a “we love science” chant from her wrestling fans at one of her matches?!!

Rachel, we love you dearly.

And this is one of the greatest days in the history of “Secret Life.”

September 11, 2010, I’m sitting in the locker room getting ready for the first match of four for the weekend of SHIMMER. I always look forward to the SHIMMER weekends. It’s the one time I get a chance to see all the girls I’ve become friends with, not only across the States, but across the world. I’m putting on the MsChif gear and make-up, stretching out and contemplating a new submission to put on my first opponent. The question in mind was how to smoothly get into it.

You will submit. YOU WILL SUBMIT!! About 10 minutes before the doors opened to let the fans in, I grabbed one of my friends and asked her to come down to the ring with me to make sure my idea would work. The way I thought to get into it was nothing too fancy, a maneuver I’ve done probably 7,336 times before. However, this time I happened to put my hand down in a position that didn’t allow my arm to turn with me as my shoulder needed to. Once in motion it couldn’t be stopped. I heard a ripping sound in my shoulder, but didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t hurting. I attempted to shake it off and said, “Give me just a minute.” Then I looked down at my arm and said, “Alright, maybe not.” I had dislocated my left shoulder. Sometimes the unfortunate happens. Thankfully, we have great support at these matches. I was brought straight to the ER where they took me right in without having to wait. As my shoulder sat out of place, that’s when all the pain really started to set in. My “SHIMbulance” driver stayed with me throughout the process. He was beyond awesome as he kept me talking about the most random things just to keep my mind off the pain.

Today’s guest blogger is our spook-tacular PBS colleague, Jasmine Bulin.

Halloween is the best day to pretend to be a scientist when for the rest of the year science is your secret life. In my real life I am a New Media Content Editor for PBS.org, but today I got to dress as Microbiologist and Professional Wrestler, Rachel Collins. Watch out, Jasmine, Big Bird’s got a “foreign object”! (Photo by Jessica Duda)

How I Got the Look

All fashionable Microbiologists start with a lab coat found at any nursing supply store. I already had in my closet a green top, black tights, black boots, and green eye shadow. A wrestling belt I found at a toy store and green clip-in hair extensions from my local beauty supply store completed the costume.

Here are some formulas to create other great “Secret Life” costumes:

Joe DeGeorge—Harry Potter-esque attire + toy keyboard (must be able to sing “Felix Felicis”)

Erika Ebbel—lab coat + pageant gown/prom dress/bridesmaid dress + tiara (sash optional)

When it comes to wrestling, Rachel is as skilled as they come. Safety is just about her first concern—right after kicking butt, of course! But like any physical activity that involves flying through the air, And she always came back! injuries can happen and Rachel has seen her fair share.

For Rachel’s “Secret” video we created a damage chart of all the memorable hits she’s taken, and though that scene ended up on the cutting room floor, we still thought the illustration would be fun to share with you.

Some of Rachel’s injuries have included separating both shoulders, losing both of her ACLs, spraining an ankle in four places, and dislocating a pinkie finger. And you thought wrestling wasn’t “real”!

[Our drawing is actually based on a woman from another very famous scientific illustration. Do you recognize her? Post a comment below if you do; if no one gets it in a few days we’ll post the answer!]

Rachel’s day job—testing how bacteria react to our dwindling antibiotic arsenal—is extremely important, for drug resistance is one of our scariest public health threats.

One of the most well known superbugs is MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus), which causes painful sores, fever and pneumonia and is impervious to a slew of common drugs. Every year, more than two million MRSA infections rack up some $4.5 billion in healthcare costs and kill 90,000 people.

New wrestling hold… the “Anti-Bacterial Scrub.” As recently as 1998, MRSA was thought to be a problem only in hospitals and other confined settings, such as nursing homes and prisons. But in the past decade, researchers have realized, much to their horror, that the bug crops up all over the place—including, famously, in high school wrestlers.

In 1993, for example, one boy on a high school wrestling team in Vermont got an infection on his arm. It healed, but he still managed to spread it to his teammates and to wrestlers from 11 other teams. Years later, the incident was recognized as one of the first MRSA outbreaks outside of a hospital.

Here’s Biochemist/Professional Wrestler Rachel Collins (a.k.a. MsChif) in action in November 2008 in a match for the SHIMMER title against Sara Del Rey. In this picture you’re seeing a “standing moonsault” in mid-move. So what, you might ask, is a “standing moonsault”?

“It’s become a signature move for me,” says Rachel “It’s derived from a back handspring, which you’ll see lots of gymnasts and cheerleaders doing. Though instead of ending the move landing on your feet, you stop the move short to land horizontally across your opponent making them take the impact of your landing.”

No “standing moonsault” for me, thanks.

Do we even have to say it? Oh, all right. Don’t try this at home, kids!

Biochemist/Professional Wrestler Rachel Collins is known for her trademark green. Apparently it goes back a long way. “I always tried to be different,” Rachel explains. “You can ask a group of people what their favorite color is, and you’ll get a lot of red, blue, black, or purple. Green is one you don’t tend to hear too often.”

Ladies and gentlemen… your soul’s tormentor.

Yes that is indeed our own Biochemist/Professional Wrestler Rachel Collins sporting some 80s hair. Her explanation for this old photo: “That was straight out of the 80s,” says Rachel. “Big hair was the thing.”

Is she worried that her rivals in the ring might see this and not be so scared anymore? “Yeah, let’s hope my opponents don’t get a look at this one or they’d see there really isn’t anything so menacing under all that green hair. Wait… what? Of course there is! It’s just disguised here!”

Our dear Rachel… love is indeed a battlefield.

When the Secret Life crew asked Rachel Collins, microbiologist and professional wrestler, what scientist she thought would’ve made a good wrestler, she said “Darwin.” Great answer! Her reason? Because he had a lot of people wanting to wrestle him over his theories. Still true!

The evolution will not be televised! We have a lot of evidence that Charles Darwin was a sensitive, kindly, thoughtful, morally upright man. Not that such attributes would prohibit anyone from becoming a wrestler, but when I tried to picture Charles Darwin, even in a parallel universe, as a Chuck Awesome or Charley Steamboat, I failed. That left me wondering about Darwin’s looks and demeanor. We know he was big on brains. Was he big on brawn?

Well, as a child, Charley, as he was called then, was no wimpy lie-abed. He liked to run and throw rocks. As a young man he hiked the rugged countryside of northern Wales to collect specimens. As an adult knocking around the house, Darwin was heavy on his feet, prone to beat the floor with his cane as he walked. He guffawed and slapped his thighs when his kids said something to crack him up. He walked Polly every day, no matter the weather! (Polly was his little white terrier.) But he sat at his desk and wrote letters a lot. He liked to sit on the sofa and let his wife read to him.

Microbiologist and wrestler Rachel Collins made me think about other scientists in history. What if they had been wrestlers, too? What would their wrestling names have been?

Hmmmm.

Announcer’s voice: INTRODUCING…

A recently discovered image of Einstein wrestling. The founder of microbiology who proved that most infectious diseases are caused by microorganisms. Louis “The Virus” Pasteur

The team that decoded the structure of the DNA molecule. “The Double Trouble Helix,” Watson and Crick

A theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity. Albert “The Equation” Einstein

The man who theorized bacteria caused infection and used early sterilization techniques. Joseph “The Germinator” Lister

Considered the father of epidemiology from his work showing cholera was transmitted in water, he removed the Broad Street water pump handle and halted an epidemic. John “The Pump Handle” Snow

Most interviews I give are done by email or over the phone. So flying out to meet up with the “Secret Life” crew, which I now refer to admirably as “the PBS interrogation crew,” was quite a different experience. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m not used to giving interviews outside of the wrestling world or to people who weren’t already wrestling fans. You never know what to expect about the type of attitude non-wrestling fans may have about the sport.

Rachel with the team. She’s going to “protect” us. To my delight, the Secret Lifers were all fantastic people. They really had an interest in what I do and had tons of questions I never get from the average wrestling fan. I could sense the excitement going into this interroga… err, interview. I had a good time talking with them all and getting to know them a little bit before we began the interview. As the interview was underway, 3.5 hours later, we were in a bit of a rush trying to get everything complete. I’m not one who’s used to talking so much at all. I was surprised at how much I actually had to say. Not only that, but I was surprised at how much there is for people to ask me about. The team made it a really fun experience for me, though, and I definitely appreciate the time taken to get a full account of my life in science and wrestling. I loved getting to be a part of this web series.

So thank you to the PBS interrogation crew! ;) Thanks for this awesome experience and for making it as fun as possible.

-Rachel

To answer the obvious question, yes, we were a bit concerned that she might smash a folding chair over our heads during the interview.

But that didn’t happen.

And she didn’t spew her signature green “mist” on us during the 10 Questions, either.

MsChif unleashed… fierce and awesome. In fact, Rachel Collins is about the sweetest person in the world. Kind, funny, solicitous of us Secret Lifers, she simply couldn’t have been nicer. And her lifelong love of science, born out of her childhood trips to her dad’s chemistry lab, was clearly both genuine and impressive in the stories she shared with us.

For me, though, what’s most memorable about Rachel is how she responded to a seemingly innocuous question from a co-worker some years ago. A secretary in her lab asked her:

“If you had one fun thing that you wanted to accomplish in your life, what would it be?”

And Rachel replied, half-surprised at her own answer: “I think I would learn to wrestle.”

Now what’s great about Rachel isn’t that particular answer. It’s what she did with that answer. She found a wrestling school and did, in fact, learn how to wrestle. Wrestling definitely wasn’t something Rachel had to do out of a need for money or career status (her job as a biochemist gives her those things). But it was something she had to do to feed her soul. Rachel became a wrestler—with the folding chairs, the green “mist,” the banshee wail, and all the rest of it—because she thought it would feel good. And it turned out that it did. It felt really good.

So during the day, you’ll continue to find Rachel happily working away on some antibiotic in her lab, but keep in mind that—just like the rest of us—she’s also got some MsChif in her.

OK, she’s got you in a headlock. You’re gasping for air. And she says, “You can ask me one question. What’s it gonna be, buddy?”

You know the routine. Ask our dear Rachel your questions in the Comments section of this post and she’ll answer them.

UPDATE: We are no longer taking more questions for Rachel. But check out her answers in the comments. She may have answered a question you were going to ask!