I still remember how the oversized blue costume hung past my knees and how the cheap plastic badge pressed into my chest. I was five, it was Halloween, and I was certain I’d be a police officer someday — with the unshakable conviction only children possess.
No one took it seriously. “She’ll want to be a princess next year,” Aunt Cici laughed. But I never wavered — not when other girls swapped handcuffs for tiaras, or when boys mocked me for being “too soft.”
I paid for the academy by working graveyard shifts at a rundown diner. On many nights, I came home exhausted, soaked shoes and aching feet, with that little badge taped to my mirror as my reminder.
My first solo traffic stop made my heart race. Then came the hard calls — overdoses, domestic violence, even a hostage crisis that still haunts me. But I stayed. I endured.