i definitely could see valerie involved in drama, she was kind of the type of person who had a ton of extracurriculars to Look Good on Transcripts, but she's always been really drawn to the arts anyway so she would've liked theater/been involved but was never a typical theater kid, if that makes sense? the craigslist route could definitely work, or maybe they could have reconnected via franki, who happens to be val's roommate now? so it could have been a weird coincidence/small world sort of thing where maybe he and franki hung out after work/she tagged along/they started talking about his movie-making.