I'm really happy to have Jennifer Clark s s Q. Do I say it right? I said it right, and I was like halfway through it and I was like, I'm gonna say wrong, but I'm really glad to have you. I know some of the same people they know that you knew and that you worked with. And I think the really cool thing about it is all of them said without question. They were like, she is she is, and I know you won't take offense to this. Some women would take offense to this, but they said, I'd rather have her than most men behind me. And I think that's a huge compliment, especially with some of the guys you know that you worked with, and that's how they felt about you. You're also getting ready to put a book out, sir, and I think that's really cool and it just goes into the one phase of your one phase of your career. And I think it's it's going to be really cool when that book comes out, because it comes. Out we're looking late October. Okay, cool on a launch date? All right, that's awesome, But that's just talking about your undercover work as a state police agent. It's my statele It's how I got into law enforcement and going through the State Police academy being a trooper and then getting asked to work undercover. And okay, so let's talk about how did you end up? So where were you born and raised? I am from Cambridge, Lunenburg County, home the Central Chargers. Okay, go Chargers. How are they doing this year in football? I have no clue. You're like, I moved back, but I don't keep up with. The I live in Georgia. I I keep up as best I can by Facebook. Okay, what part of Georgia you live in? I lived down on the coast Simons. I bet you thought I have for you. I think you did. I know I was born in Columbus, Georgia. So okay, So but you're what part of Georgia. I'm down to Saint Simon's Own Okay, in the coast. Okay, so all the good seafood. Great seafood that that while the Georgia wild called shrump, you can't compare the line. We went to the Savanna, My wife and I went to Savannah and it was like that. It was like unbelievable seafood, shrimp and. Grits, grits, just everything and then because of where we are, you have a lot of great restaurants, I mean, line cooks, chefs. It doesn't matter that these people can cook. And they know how. You know, it's it's not just like hey, I read about it. It's they've they've spent their entire career. So that's a good transition for me. The good transition for me is like, you live in Georgia, you grew up in Virginia. You turned out to be a master of your craft as an undercover because I mean, I think it's a pretty good indication of how good you are at what you do when you get picked up by a federal agency. Talk about what So you went to uh luniverg County High School, all right, and so how did you decide to go into law enforcement? It's kind of an awful story. I mean, you know when you're a kid, you know, you just kind of watching TV and you're kind of lizing in US policing, the firefighters, the EMS, and you know you watched everything from emergency. To Emergency fifty one. Right, Yeah, all those people had to watch all of that, and you see that it says it's kind of it's cool, and I don't know. There were things that happened when I was young that it may have stuck in my head. That might have been the spark to where things got started. Who knows. Because you're a kid, You're little, right, And of course we're in a very low crime place loot you know, Lennenburgh can not a lot going on there. You got to look for crime there. And so I thought about it at eighteen and I thought, she I don't think they even they don't take women. And I went off to college and went to Old Dominion, graduated there in eighty four and I for some reason was over at the courthouse building getting something and I was stuck on the elevator for a few minutes there and the Chief of Police with norpheld PD was in the elevator with me, and he wanted to know when I was graduating from ODU and because I had ODU shirt or something on it, right, And I told him and he said, you know, we could use undercover you know whatever like that. I'm just like looking at this guy like. I don't know what they're talking about. So I went out and used my college degree. It is what I did, and it was in. My head it just was. And so I came home that winter went hunting with my dad. Because I grew up hunting with my dad. I'm a talker, so it was great. The squirrels would go to the other side of the tree and he could get them. I didn't go to my side and talk. And I'm thinking, I'm I never really told my dad what was going to do. I asked told him what I was going to do. Just that's how our relationship, you know, was, and we would be out there hunting, and so I sort of asked told him I was looking at maybe going with police department, with either Norfolk or Richmond. I was going to apply to them. And he doesn't say anything. And I thought he was going to push back, or he was going to say no, or he was going to have something to say. Just didn't know what it was going to happen. And we're like the one quiet time and squirrel hunt, right, yeah. For both of us, because I'm I'm waiting for the reaction, right and there's no reaction. There's two minutes of the longest two minutes of silence. Every squirrel something. There's like no deer trumping through. There's no deer dogs running that there's just quiet, and he goes, you need to go with state police. And that was just the answer. And I started laughing. I said, they don't hire women, and he looked at me, Yes, they do. What year is this, This. Is nineteen eighty five. And I said, well, have you ever seen a female trooper? And he goes, no, but they hire them. He goes Title nine. It was passed in nineteen seventy two, and they have to. And I'm sort of caught off guard because here's my dad actually quoting the law to me. But he has these answers and he's so matter of fact, like exact. He's just saying like this is what he's just stopped. And we're standing there in the woods and he's talking to me, and he's just a matter of fact blunt. He goes, if you're going to do this, you need to go with state police. Okay, And I was sort of okay, and my brain is thinking huh, and he goes, in fact, you need to take yourself down a Richmond and get a copy of what their requirements are and what you need to do. And you need to know all of that, he said, because don't expect anybody to give you anything. He goes, it's not going to matter if you're a man or a woman. You going through that academy, you're going to have to do it all. No one's going to give it to you, okay. And he was always about that in life that you know, don't expect life to be fair. That the one said it was going to be fair. So don't expect that you want something, you can do it, go after it, get it. But it's not just a pep talk. I think that's cool. And that's what I hear from you is it's not a pep talk. It is matter of fact. It's a matter of fact, but it's also a plan. It's like, hey, this is the plan, this is what you're gonna do. I think that is what's really cool about like a parent is giving that direction. But I think like for you, like what I hear as I hear you saying like, this is what my dad said. And so what happens. You go and get the You get the directives and all they want from the state police. And then where does it go from there? Well, I start filling out the applications and I went ahead and got Richmond and Norfolk. Well was at it, okay, just the case, just in case, right. And I had a job done in Norfolk that I had started and just it was, you know, a good place, working at a senior center and I was in charge and it was kind of it's kind of nifty for you know, just being twenty two. And right straight back college, right, And. The Norfolk Police exam came up and they were giving it at the building where my brand new boss was at and I was afraid to go over there and he see me take the. Test, see gifted. Let didn't do it. And then I thought, well, my dad's right, make up your mind what you're gonna do. And I said, well, I'll just wait on the State Police, okay. And I waited and I waited, and about three maybe four months after I applied, I get this letter and it tells me to be at the State Police Academy in Richmond, seventy seven hundred mi Lothian Turnpike. Be there this date, this time, and you're going to be doing a written test and a physical testing. You can do all these things that day. And I thought, okay, and there's no study guide, there's nobody I can ask. And there's no Internet, there's no social media or anything else to like. I think people don't realize what it was like. No, And it wasn't like you weren't. There wasn't twenty people applying for that job. There were probably hundreds of people applying just like you were. And it wasn't like they gave you any extra time or anything else. It was just a matter of fact, you will be here and you will do this. So you go to Richmond. Was that like how many people were down there? I would like to say we were somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy to eighty people maybe, And it's pretty much a full day, right, and everybody's pretty much addressing you by your last name. And I remember, we take like this written test and then part of it has some psychological type stuff in it, but it's not much. I mean, you know, it was really basic. And so I took the test. If you're doing sixty four and a fifty five, how many miles per hour is that over the speed limit? Oh? Well that's nine. Now. It's good that they kept that simple because my ability to count and work with numbers really depends on my fingers and my toes and how much access I have because I am not the best at mathematics, and they asked little things of that nature, and it was it's just a long test. I meane question, Yeah, so what was the phys co agility? Like the physical part? They had us in the gym. So we end to run through this like tube things, so you must like a crawling through, but you're going through as fast as you can because they're timing that coming out. There's some stuff around some cones. And then there was a test of steps and they took your pulse rate and things before you started, and I remember standing there and the recruiter troopers were there. You know, they're checking your pulse to try to see, you know, what your resting pulse rate is. Then you do the steps for like two minutes and you're checking your pulse and I remember them looking at me and they're like, you work out a lot, yes. And he is learned to check your rate again. So somebod else is checking it and I guess my my pulse rate was only running about eighty eight. This is not right, no, but my resting pulse rate threw them off because it was like forty eight and. I don't get really excited. It just I'm chill. I'm really just glad. This is good, you know. And so he said that really good. And so then we had to go outside and there was this test of how fast you could get your seat out off and get out of the state police driver's side of the car and get around the door like to get to the front of the car. It was just this real quick thing and we did that. I just thought it was cool because we got to sit in the car, you. Know car the police make somebody get a camera and it would like it, isn't that where everybody's taking a picture? Yeah, So they did that, and there's a couple other tests. I don't really remember them all, but it's like, all right, this is this is cool. Well, so you finished, you finished that day out. Then how long does it take them to get back to you or do you have like an accident interview or anything like that. No, they don't only talk to you on that thing. I get a phone call, uh sometime there, And that was like in August, about in November. I'm getting a phone call. I guess there was maybe a letter letting me know I had passed everything and they're going to only to the next phase of background and all, and I had signed off where they could have access to everything whatever they need, the criminal records, financial records. It wasn't a whole lot on like that. So I get called by retired Sergeant Rex Carter and he starts doing my background and I realize it's coming up quick as to what these hiring dates are. I get notified right there at the end of December of eighty six to come to headquarters and to bring all my stuff and we're going to go see the State Police's contracted doctor. He's basically across Milothian someplace out that way. So i'm there. There's five guys there. We're all dressed in our Sunday best where you know, everybody's looking nice and clean and cut, and we go over to the doctor's office. We come back and there's an older lieutenant there, Lieutenant Watts. Here's kind of grizzled least. He just flat tells me in the hallway, you're too fat and you know so, and you. Said you were a buck twenty at this point. At that point, I might have been about one thirty five or something somewhere in there. Whatever, it was I did not meet their standards by one pound or something on the. On the ratio. That they on the doctor scales, and they I'm thinking, all right, you know, because I am like a junior size eight in clothing or something. I am small, and I'm thinking, okay. I'm not really sure what you're looking. What what the what the weight limit thing is here? You know they got a weight limit And he goes, you'll have to wait right here. I'll be back with you. So I'm standing in this hallway at seventies of them maloth and I'm in the headquarters in this big, empty, older building. It's like a nineteen forties building. Everything echoes there, and I'm just like, okay, can't cry, don't cry. Just pull it together, pull it together. I don't know what this is about. But the five guys go in the room. He comes back out, He looks at me, looks at the papers. You need to go see Nurseling. She's the state police. Nurse tells me where it is, one set of directions. There's no like, I don't know where I'm driving there, Like I don't know where you want? Just drive around the building. Go I go out, get in my vehicle. Drive over. Have no idea where I'm going on the State Police Academy grounds. I don't know. Get over there. She's at the very end of the far west wing hallway. Very nicest person in the world. She comes in. She's like, you know, we weigh. She goes, she does a caliber hole. She goes, you can gain twenty five pounds. She goes, you're solid muscle. She goes, don't worry about him. He's rough, like he's gruff with everybody. She just tells me this and it's so nice. So she calls him. They send me back over. Now it's just me and him. The five guys have left, they finished for their Here, I am dragging up the back rear ind stuff and everything is just yes sir, no, sir, yes, sir no, sir. And he's telling me, now, my hair is too long for the State Police. I'm gonna have to have a haircut before the academy starts. And you're like, does this mean I'm hired? Pretty much, it's clicking. My brain is going I think the job is mine. It's just a matter of this haircut. I can get a haircut. And my mom has been cutting hair her whole life, because that's she runs a beauty shop. So, yeah, I got ten nailed this afternoon. Yeah, and he's telling me my starting date is January sixteenth. We're going to come for a week to get uniforms, et cetera, and then we're going to go out into the field with field training officers for a ride along program with them for a few weeks, and the official academy begins March third. So it's all great, it's right here. At the end of December, everything is happening, and then Trooper Ricky McCoy gets shot and killed out on Interstate eighty one. That was in nineteen eighty six January beco. Is he the one that got killed on sixty four or eighty one eighty one? Okay, but it was either Body Tide, rock Birds, wasn't it. I want to say it was down maybe Body Tide it was. But that happens, and it's like headlines everywhere. It's it's it's the only thing anybody's talking about on the news in Richmond. It's the only thing that's being talked about. It's the only thing. It's in the newspapers. Definitely the only thing in Luniburg County. Definitely, well at this point because I've got all I have a huge family between my mom and dad's side, it's huge, and cousins and things, aunts and uncles, and it was just like everybody's sort of like, oh, you know what, are you sure? She well, my dad hadn't ever question this. He never did come back and say are you sure? There's none of that. He'd already given you a plan. You follow the plan, and he could see I was working towards doing it. My mom was, so we never really sit down and discuss the details of what's happened. And Trooper McCoy was executed. I mean, he didn't just get shot as he's trying to crawl back to his car. They get out and execute him. It was three other people were murdered. And because he kind of pulled yeah on the back end of it, like he it wasn't like it used to. It isn't like it is now where you had instant access to information if you did something in another state or even another counter or two a way, it wasn't like you're aware of it. So he kind of went into it kind of blind. Yeah, they were driving with their bright headlights on, and the truck drivers were complaining on the CBE radio and he heard it, and he happened to see the vehicle and it was speeding. R active trooper and. Kind of speeding, not not heavily duty and at the same time, bright headlights on, and he pulled them over. And he had no idea, He had no idea what he was. But then anytime any officer is pulling someone over, you don't know what's happening in that car, what's going on in their mind. So all that stuff happens, you start, you do your FTO, you get to the academy. What was it like, how many weeks was it? Back then, they had this thing we were going to be the smallest class they had ever hired. And the thought process behind this was, if we hire thirty five, we'll get them through them full academy. We won't lose anybody out the academy. Because they were getting tired of getting people halfway through the academy and losing them, or getting them through the first two weeks and losing them, or even to the last week and losing them out of the academy, because it's a lot of time, money, invested in this person who doesn't succeed. If we do this on a smaller. Scale, we'll be better. We'll be better, and we will cut off. We were going to do twenty two weeks, but they said twenty weeks because you'll come back and you'll get the breathalyzer training at a later date. After our class, they decided that that was not the way to go about it. Go back to hiring link they did. Because of our thirty five, only one quit before the end of the full year. You know, things like that do happen. So, yeah, we did graduate thirty five. We started thirty five, graduated thirty five. You know, it's it's very paramilitary, but leaning more to the military end of things, as far as learning to salute, learning not to lean against the wall, learning the state you know, stand and parade, rest and different things. I'll put your hat on, yeah, oh. Yeah, you might have learned to screw that hat on really good. Get the hat on right. Yeah. So the driver's train what was driver's training like back then? Fun? Was it? Really? Oh? I love that because I've heard stories about like at the State Police Academy where they take they were talking about boxing gloves or something at the end of broom handles and you go into a curve and they punched the back of the car to make it least traction. Did that happen to y'all or not? Now? What? We got to go out to brand new Interstate that they were building two ninety five that wasn't open yet. We got to drive out there and do all kinds of really cool. And that was back when cars actually had horse power. We do pretty good. Yeah, between the cars they had force and the brand new Chevy Capris and then then the the Ford Crown Vixen, all their big cars at big heavy cars, but you could drive them and learn and do a lot of neat things. And they were teaching you stuff and you really learn. And I still do it today. And I tried to teach this to my grandchildren here lately. Use your mirrors. I know you got that really cool. Camera the backup cat. Let me show you about using your mirrors. And I took my grandson out twice driving this past year and I said, let's go to find a parking lot. What are we gonna do? I said, We're gonna drive Dana Jens truck. What yep, We're gonna do. We're gonna practice reverse. We're just gonna drive in reverse all day. And nobody knows how to parallel park. So I made him do reverse driving. He hadn't, so he was like, this is cool. So he got that, and it's he just got his first new new to him vehicle. US got a truckerg right. No he doesn't. He doesn't know. He's from South Carolina. That's a grandkid. So he he liked that and all that. You've got to learn to drive with your mirrors at all times. Just just learn and I'll remind them up forever. So I still drive with my mirrors a lot and it helps, I think. But driving with the State Police was just it was great. You just you got to go so fast. It was Yeah, it was just a chante. You could floor and that was back. Did y'all have the blue bubble gums at that point where they steal the red. We had blue bubbles, big, old, big, old, blue, big. It looks like you're trying to land a plane. It was huge, and its overtop of your head, and so was the siren. Okay, so I figured I'm due for hearing loss at any day now because that over the time. It was very loud. So you go through all that. What what what was the marksmanship? Like firearms for y'all because. Thirty eight revolvers, So we had the big old model sixty four Smith and Wesson thirty eight six shot We had the speedloaders to drop and do and so you had to. We also had the Remington eight seventy pump shot guns and that was it. Uh, there were no tasers, there was no gas or but y'all had those cybers. What did the blackjack, Well, they don't call them black jacks. Do you remember the leather jack? Yeah, slapjack. They were not issued, but they were highly recommended. Our pants, our clothing was made, as I understood it, by the prison systems, and so they built a slapjack pocket into the pants. And so almost like paint. So if you acquired a slapjack, you could put it in that pocket. It could go in that pocket because you had that pocket. You were issued a five cell decel flash like maglight, so you know you have a light. You know, it's pretty long. It pretty much it was a hefty baseball bat and you had that. But that don't really taxics they teach you things they teach you come along and stuff of that nature. They don't teach you how to fight. They did let us box. We learned. We learned some basic tactics and some basic martial arts karate moves. I probably should clarify when I was in college I did martial arts. Oh okay, in fact, I did it, So you did. You did pretty well in defensive tactics. Then I didn't have probably better than most, maybe because I haven't started it yet. I had gotten my black belt in Japan back in nineteen eighty five. I went on with my sinse and well twenty two of us went and we came back with black belts. But we've been doing it for years. So I've been training like every day for like four or five. Threw off the ratio. They're like, this girl's all muscle. Yeah, we didn't plan for that. Well, you know, hope that maybe hadn't been all. I had to give up things like pizza and beer and rice because I had a lot of that before going to the academy. But at the same time, we worked out a lot. We did lots of push ups, lots of set ups, locks of legs work, and then we didn't all a lot of sparring because arsence a in training and it was a bare knuckle fighting what they all to talk about it now. But we didn't have all the penans. We didn't have mouthpieces and headgear and chest gear and things. Learn how to keep your hands up. Yeah. So at the academy, I actually fought the trooper delt Trooper Charlley the great guy, because I had my choice who had liked to fight, but but they picked Charlie, so I had I took it as a compliment. They were letting me fight one of the males, and I think you should because I'd always fought guys in martial arts. I mean I fought girls too, you know, they're my friends, but in sparring fighting. But if you're going to do these two two minute rounds with these really big twelve ounce heavy boxing gloves and a football helmet on, because that's the only thing that they had to keep you from getting hit at the State Police Academy and you and Trooper Gettings was one of our self defense tactics instructors, and so he was very much on me that do not kick him. It's going to be your first instinct and to do don't. Kick him because you have more reach. And I was that's how I could keep people away from me, and that's from my size, my strength. My feet were it and I couldn't sweep him, I couldn't hit him with an elbow strike. These things were off. I had to box, I had to use so. That I mean, you're going against what you've learned for years. So that first two minutes it was kind of like I was adjusting to everything between the mouthpiece of everything going on, but also realizing that when Charlie, when he would hit me in the face or in the helmet, that it didn't hurt. Which it just kind of stunned you a little bit, just like, well that's. Interesting, and my head's popping back and forth. I'm like okay. And so the second two minute round was pretty good, but both of us afterwards were sitting there thanking one another for doing We're sitting on the bench together and we're both breathing in all the oxygen the gym has left. Because the idea is not to win a fight like the person you're fighting. The whole idea was to understand that if you get in a fight with someone. Four minutes is an awful long time long and while you're waiting for backup or help. So it is to your advantage to know and learn as many self defense techniques as you can to be able to take control of somebody, whether it's one of these come along techniques, whatever it takes. But if you think you're going to punch somebody and knock them out, no, if you think that you're going to be able to you know, manhandle, manhandle anybody, you know, it's not gonna happen. I mean, years later, I had a boss bruce with an ATF and he here's a big guy, you're running close to six y five and about three fifteen three twenty right then interest me something. I said, I may not win, but I'm gonna leave a mark on you. It's gonna hurt. You're gonna be thinking about me when you're over there rubbing that going guys, that hurts. You left a mark, right, So it's that kind of thing, and I think people think, oh, you got to get in there and win. It's like, it's not a win to lose. You are fighting, and if you're on the side of the road fighting, it is for your life. Right, And if you're fighting fair, you're not gonna win. No, And you have to have that mindset. If I'm gonna win this, I'm not gonna just survive. I want to go home. I got things I gotta do. I mean, dogs need to see me. I need to see my dogs. Right, you know, whatever it is gets you you. So that's kind of towards the end of the academy you graduate. Where was your first assignment. Vision five Area thirty two? Now? Where is that at Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Portsmouth at the time? Okay, And I'm sure it was like a really nice place to work and the interstate and everything else. What was it like being a trooper down there? It's busy. It was busy, busy, busy. It was every day, all day, every night, all night. Any any call that you had while you were a road trooper that like stands out to you, like, hey, this was like this is a little bit different, or just like anything that you remember about working as a trooper. Yeah, I mean I remember a lot of it. And because you don't just get to work it, you get to write it all down. Right, document. I wrote a report. I wrote reports about it. You know, I wrote accents. Now, we worked a lot of accidents. I averaged two hundred accident reports a year that I had to write because rush hour traffic. Morning and night was brutal. Well, a lot of accidents. Worked, a lot of fatals because of alcohol or other impairments, h distracted drivers, sleeping drivers, high speed things like that. So you end up working on and. There wasn't a lot of safety equipment back then. You had a seat belt and that's just a seat belt. Laws and child safety seats came out while I was a trooper. I mean like actually became a hey you have to have a child safety seat, and that was a big thing. Yeah, I mean they all kind of stand out to a point, and I write about a couple of them in the book. So because i'd been on the job, and when you get out of the academy, you're with an ft O and I'm like my first or second night out on my own and one of the troopers has a double fatality accident and I go and I'm assisting him there, and he was great, cecil Bray, great, great guy, and he recognized right off the bat that I've not been to a fatality and this is all fresh, I mean everything that everything has happened. I don't think. I don't think there's anything that prepares you what the carnage that you see in vehicle accidents and any type of thing that is a violent death. I don't. I don't think anybody can. Your worst imagination on Halloween like would not bear you. No, you're not ready. And we've only seen it in in some old movies, old old videos and some back before PowerPoint there were slide shows, you. Know, and but that doesn't have that doesn't that doesn't that doesn't touch the smell at the road. It's right there. The smell is everything. It's just it's just I know that, Like I know, people don't believe that if they hadn't worked in this occupation. But like this, like on suicides that you walk in right afterwards, there is a distinct smell of brain matter everything, the smell, the gunpowder smell, all those things like it is. And I can understand why people some people get PTSD and they have that like those triggers, because if you don't learn how to navigate through that, it's just very very difficult. Well, it's it was so much and I'm taking it in what I'm seeing, you know, And he's explaining the accident scene to me and what's happened. This was a dots in three hundred Z I think it is what they called him, Nissan Z and it has hit the barricade wall out on Route forty four, which I think is called two sixty four. Now it's hit that, and then it's flipped, and he's showing me the gouges and how it's flipped five times and it's landed back up on its wheels. I mean, it's sitting right on its wheels. It's crushed down. It had t tops, but the te tops apparently had not been on it, because we found them crushed in the back end and stuff. So we have a person on the interstate that is deceased. We have somebody who was buckled in to the front passage, yeah. And then you have one that's still. Still strapped still in the passenger front seat and crushed out. So he's telling me things, and he's explaining things, but he's also kind of keeping. It matter of fact as a matter of fact. But he's using a little bit of gallows humor, but not a lot, just a little bit to kind of lighten it up, right, because he's watching me, because you want you to be able to function, Yeah, because I have to function through this thing. And as he sees that, I'm taking it in, and I was really taking it in more methodically, like scientific, like things were just locking in from me, like oh, okay, I'm learning. Because I was smelling alcohol but I didn't say it. He goes, you're smelling alcohol and I said yeah, and he said, yeah, there's going this is going to be pretty much you're gonna this is probably going to be the contributing factor. You're smelling it off the blood and there was a lot of blood around me and on it. Oh okay, well all right, yeah I got that, and things like that started to become. This is how you learn, how you process. Yeah, And so he asked me if I would take one of the other troopers was on the scene with me, if we would go out, and if I would do the death notification at the family and they would have a Virginia Beach p D chaplain would meet us at the house. But it was still going to be up to me to talk to them. And that's tough because just. Without going through a whole lot of detail. Are you're notifying parents of teenagers or you notifying parents of it's whoever. And I talk about it in one of the chapters about being there on that doorstep and knowing the look that's going to be in those eyes because they see you and this other because usually we tried to do it too if we could. They see you, they see the trooper uniform, They know that their loved one is not on yet. Yes, and they're looking past. You, hoping that you brought them home with you. They they just are they're looking past you and you you just know it, you know the look before that door opens. And I just I the last the last one I had to do was a teenager and it was just like, you know, no, I don't This is not good, brutal, this is rough because you just you just don't want to do that, and there's nothing you can say. I don't think that's a hard thing for me. Is for the general population that hasn't had to experience that and have the have that pressure on you to make sure the delivery is in the most because that's that's a life changing event for them. You could have done it twenty times before them. But like you are still interrupting somebody's life and you're delivering them catastrophic news and there is no right way to do it you and. They're changing their life. Yes, forever, it is no different than when I mentioned Trooper McCoy. It is no different from that night. It changed that family, It changed everything for everybody that was affected by that night. Forever, it is no different. Every time you knock on that door to have to deliver that news, you are about to change absolutely everything and you can't fix it. And that was one the things that probably was a learning thing for me for the longest time. I can't fix this. I want to fix it, but I can't fix this. I'm doing what I can do and you can't. You can't let us stay in your head too long because you've got other things to do. I mean, I knew some guys that worked a lot of fatalities. One that used to work out on fifty eight and I believe he had like nine fatality total in a one week working period. Now, these were multi fatality accidents out on fifty eight before they got it fixed, back when it was called suicide strip and it was just you know, that's overwhelming. Just that's so much because you have like three in one car, two in another car. That like motorv was that a motor vehicle crash against a commercial vehicle? Is that combination of everything? Yeah? I mean just so you finished with your like not finished, but like at some point you you get approached about being an undercover. Yeah, I'd been with the state. Now they let me do one little cute little undercover I thought was such a big deal. It turned out not to be. But to me it was the be asking me, Yeah, you're asking me to do this, this has got. To be cool. Well, I'd already gotten jammed up with a couple of things, and I'd already made a few rookie mistakes that were riding over top my head. Right. I was like, I need to do anything if somebody could, just because you know, people are really quick to complain about you, even if you've done nothing. Yes, and then if you give them something, it's just like it's like. It's like great, wow, So if you if somebody could just say something nice about what I do, it would be great. But I wasn't getting any of that. I was like, yeah, this is just okay. It does seem like when you hit that streak, it's just like everything that I do is turning to craft. I don't even know how to handle it. Yeah, it's just like, okay, yo, what else could I step in the day? It's like exactly right, So you get, so you get how do you end up as an undercovery? Your first one? You were talking about, like, hey, this is kind of. Like first one. It's early in the morning, it's like rush hours, ongoing and over. As I call it, the loud speaker of life Dispatch is saying my number was nine five eight and it was my first sergeant basically using his number. I forget what it was, but anyway, nine to five eight, you know, one sixty nine needs you to meet him at the area office right away. There's not a trooper in the division. There's not a trooper in my area. That didn't just hear that go out at ten minutes to eight in the morning, and it's like, what the hell have I done now? Because you're like, and that's not even the words I was thinking of what was going on. And I am twenty three and all I know is my mouth is Jesus the sucks, you know, my whole life sucks. And I'm like, so I'm driving to the office and I'm thinking this is god to be bad because because. You're going through all your you're going through all the different calls and everything. In the office in rush hour. Yeah, they never call you to the office in rush hour because it's rush. Hour, and right, they want as many, they want you out. They want you on the road, right, And it's like this has to be this is not good. Yeah, this, this is this, this is probably it next level. So you get everything together and you're thinking, wow, okay, it's don't care. All them buttons are buttoned and there's nothing. Everything is perfect, older tiles, right, hot hat is right. Go walk into the office and hey, Jenny Lynn, good to see you this morning. Come on in my office. And I'm thinking, okay, h is he setting me up? Like I said, my name is not even Jenny Lynn. And so it was just sort of like but that's what he called me, and I I just I had to let that go, just let him call me that. So I was like, yes, sir. So I go in and sit down and I'm trying to blend in with this wood paneling. Just like just maybe you're not going to see the young troopers sitting here. I'm just part of the building. Could blend right up in here, because what we needed was some background, but they didn't have any. So uh, He's like, we need you to do us a favor this morning. Now, I had already figured out that the we and us was you was the department, the Department of the State Police needed a favor from me. The we and us wanted a favor. Okay, yes, sir, we need you just go home, put your college clothes on, and and and we're going to have you because we've got bomb threats going on over on the Eastern Shore. We're going to send you back to the community college for the day, and we're gonna try to figure out who is making these bomb threats because it's it's it's been happening off and on for two weeks. And you you, you know you're a college student. I'm just like, Okay, I'm not, but I guess I still look like one, So yeah, I am kind of closer. And I probably do have what he called college clothes at home, which I think he meant jeans on a T shirt. I right. He just didn't want to tell you how to dress. He's like, you know, So I get keys for an undercover vehicle. It was a green Monte Carlo. All this stuff. I was zipped in my apartment. I am just elated work under cover. Yes, you know, it's not gonna be the biggest thing, but it's my thing everything. And I get on the little secret radio they have in the car and let them know that I'm en route to that location. Because everybody that's listening to that radio that figured I'd just gotten jammed up again. No, no, no, I'm doing something secret thing. So it was it was good, and I went and I at least figured out who it was, or pretty much was. But it wasn't that cool. I mean because he was already the person they suspected, and the weird comments that the guy made to me and the weird behavior just kind of added it to it into it. And so they offered him a polygraph and the he confessed to the polygraph operator. But you had a hand in it, so you transitioned from that operation, and then how did you get into it full time? I had gone through a ugly relationship breakup that. Never happens when you just start working in a new job. Never does police officers never date one another, and they ever lived together, and none of those things. So that ended badly for me. He moved along with no problem. I took it. I took it a little bit different. I took it hard, you know, for you know, forty years or something. I'm over today. Today is my new way forward. But but yeah, so I was trying to think if I could just disappear, if I could just if I could just be somebody else, somewhere else, would be great. And along came a spider and sat down beside me and said, hey, we have an undercovered thing we would like to know if you would like to be a full time undercovered with the state Police. It's a two step increase in pay. I think that meant like, yeah, like you want me to do what? Yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it right. And then I find out I'm leaving Division five. I'm gonna actually have to go to Division three to appomatics, and then they're gonna assign me to some other place and my people don't even know where I'm gonna go, and they're gonna give me an undercover cardsn be mine. And I got that whole whopping two step increase in pay. It's not a promotion. They made it very clear it's a lateral but you're gonna get two steps, which back then was I don't know, like eighty five dollars more a month or something. No, it wasn't all right, that's right, two steps and. I get to have a new name and a new data birth and a new Social Security number. I immediately made myself three years younger. Just of course, did you get to pick the picture or did they take No? I went to dm V with all the photos and I had to take the whole driving test, so. They went they went all in. Either they went all in and they didn't plan through it, and they're like, no, we're all in, like the whole thing. And they move myself and they move another young lady who had just got an the academy and was working for Stanton Police Department. They move us into Ferry of Court, which is a federal housing supplemented Section eight type thing, and they tell us right off the bout, we don't have any informants yet. Okay, we have gang problems and we were starting to see crack on the streets a lot in the cocaine, and we're hearing guns, and we're hearing about violence, and we're hearing about fights, and we're also. Concerned about in military terms, is we have an enemy over here? Yes, well we think we might know it is. But if you don't mind, just go over there and see each find out, okay. And the biggest thing that they told us that day was because we had these secret meetings up on Afton Mountain and Howard Johnson's. Something on the top of the mountain. We have a secret meeting and they were like, the girls should be okay as long as they play it safe. You're like, I'm in an undercover operation. I'm going to live there. It's section house. If my cover is another female and undercover. And she's We started out together and what we found out is we got asked out on dates and people were willing to accommodate. Guys would like to ask us out. We're willing to buy dope. I'll find for you, Yeah, to give dope. We're like, this is not how this works. We got quit doing this. We found out that trying to go to bars in the area, nightclubs, bars, whatever you want to call it, that involves a lot of alcohol and you're once again caught in that situation. You're not this is not working out. I'm not getting the dope buys I need. And if I hang around here, people are expecting to use the dope, right, and so you're not like you're this. You're going in too far down on the in the in the levels. Yeah, and you're you're a bottom feeder and you want to be mid to upper feet. You try it, And of course the states sitting there going just make three buys from somebody, three felony buys of cocaine or crack and move on, don't buy from them again, which that's very hard to explain to people like. Hey, we really enjoyed our time. You got the best crack in town, but I'm gonna go over here and buy from your competitor. Yeah, Or once you send one of your guys out there, let me buy from them, you know, because I can't buy from you again. And that became, you know, that sort of things you work through. They ended up being able to work her a lot in the city of Stanton and mine in that area around there because they've got informants there, and at the same time, the state hooked up with Waynesburg, which Stanton Waynesburg really close and with Waynesburg we worked with the detective Cline up there. Great guy. He had a great informant. Okay, in the world of informance, he had a great informant that's still. Well talking about it. So I think people don't understand. I think people like see TV shows and they think about different things and they think about what isn't it? What exactly is a good informant? So we have somebody that has been identified as somebody that's involved in the illegal activity that you're involving yourself in, and they decide to help you jealousy, girlfriend, boyfriend issue, relationship issues and they're willing to sell out their friends in a lot of cases. Yes, go, So what do you have? Okay for him? He was not the greatest informant I ever had. I had a couple far better later on in years. But all right, but you hadn't had a source development class at this point. Like how I did anything? Yeah, I had nothing. I I I literally went to the State Police Academy a few years before I learned how to be a state trooper undercoverent. This far, I know how to work this accident, but like past that out really yeah. Undercover was we had new training in fact drug recognition. They had done that for about an hour one day at the academy. That's what I other than what I'd seen as a trooper. So their expectation is, well, you're a female and you can fit in, and so go do that. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. But it's not like we're gonna have a dude fighting you or anything else. Like he might try to, like, you know, spoon up to you or something like that. But other than that, you'll be You should be good, you should be fine everything, and if you play it safe. Right, So if you play it safe. So I had a top side agent assigned to me, special agent CB White, Charlie White, out of Stanton, and he was assigned to me. Great guy, great family, great guy. But I think great attitude is let's. Talk about top side what that means. Okay, So top side I'll try to explain the best, the candid and correct me. But on the top side you have somebody that is going to the area office or whatever on a consistent basis, knows the reports, knows the troopers and everything else. And if things go really bad, it's his responsibility to It's not like you're going to go run through I'm undercover agent or anything else. You have your cover and your top side. That is like acting as that conduit between what the work that you're doing. And he's probably one of just a very few people that knows exactly who you are and what you're doing very much. So it very limited as to who knew we were there. In fact, it was so limited. You know, the chief of police, the common Wal's attorney, none of them, they knew we existed. They just didn't know who we were. Which is the same. I don't even think they knew. I don't even think they knew that we were females. I think that doesn't come out until later. But they know they've got undercovers working and we're trying to target these problems. So Stanton Posse was the gang that was locally there. Then around Augusta County you had a various dope together people, and then Waynesboro had we called him the Ford Gang, pop of Ford, that was his name, That's what he went by. He had several women who had had children, and he had about twenty six kids. Of various ages. I mean up in their thirties and down into the teens. That's a gang. So all of his male children were his drug dealers. So the Ford Boys, and that's how we knew them. They were one of the gangs. Then there was a gang that had shown up. I think they had some relatives in the Stanton Augusta area. They kind of lived on the outskirts of Stanton and we called them the Beaber Boys for a name, but it was because they wore pagers and that was very different and no one was used to that. And they were about ten or eleven, and they had come down from Plainville, New Jersey area. They had been in Richmond. There had been a homicide in Richmond, and they suddenly ended up in the Stanton area and things. Don't know what all that was about, but there were a lot of things going on. Same as the Ford family had been in New York. There had been a homicide in New York and they suddenly found themselves living in Waynesboro. So they're like that, hey, this is a much better this is a fresh star. But it doesn't matter where you go, there's still that criminal activity. You just have to know how to get into it, and so they had all of the access to cocaine, crack and even heroin, which we were told there was no heroin, and so we made a couple of buys of heroin from pop Aford to go. Yeah, so their sources were from their previous existence up there, so they had access to larger quantities. Yeah, they just needed to be someplace that if anybody was investigating the homicides, maybe they couldn't find the killers. Right because back then, Back then, you didn't have that community, you didn't have that instant access to communication. I always tell people one of the things that I thought was the coolest with the Internet and with social media used to be when we pray for people and interview people that have done things wrong and they start telling us information, it would take us days, if not weeks, to identify all the participants. Now it's like instant, like you connect one and pretty soon you not only have the ones that they know about, you have the other ones that they're connected to and you can start linking them. Well. This is why the Waysbury informant would have been great. Great because he was so involved in the drug usage and the drug world. He knew a lot of the names. He knew their names, their nicknames, their apartments that they lived in, some of the girlfriends that ran with them, places that they were buying, some of the guns that were going back up north to be traded for coke and crack. He didn't necessarily know who was supplying in those sort of things or who was making the reups, but that's what you did. But that's what I was there for, bit as much intel as I could, and to become more of a vital person to them, not just trying to buy fifty dollars one hundred dollars worth of coke, but getting them to trust me enough that they're talking to me that they're wanting to ride with me in my car, go places with me. So I actually you started a savage in who their network was and. The way they operate, and who was and who had the control over things and who made the decision making. Also was seeing all the guns, because I was seeing who was caring. For the most part, they were not as flashy about the guns up in the Stanton area. When we were there, you saw the guns. Sometimes it was imprinted on their clothing. Other times you might have saw just the butt of the handle for the most part, right, they were not as. Direct. Later on I would be with people. Who were very and where were they Yeah, the direct ones. Where are they from? I was in the crackhouses down there, and they made it very clearly. But in that type of situation, that's more of like you don't have the same word of mouth like you do in a small area like Waynesboro. You have to you pretty much established credibility. Every time they they do is they're like, like, these dudes are strapped. I see they're strapped, right, this is probably not somewhere where I need to try to rob somebody or anything else. I don't want to do anything stupid. And if I got an informant with me, I don't want them doing anything stupid because the last thing we need to do is get in the middle of a gun because you tried to snag a twenty dollars bag of rock. Don't do that just like because you know, because I personally might have happen. Think, well, tell me this, like, do you ever remember a situation that you were in working in an undercover capacity where you had to work past what a bad situation that then an informant puts you in. Not so much that the informant put me in, but I wish they'd have given me better details. So you just kind of you were like blind and you're just playing. Catch up, pantsing it all the way away, and you know, just like okay. So does that go well with the groping story? The groping story was not an informant that did an introduction, but an informant who had provided information okay, and I wish she had provided better details, like. These guys are really careful. They're going to search you for wires and things. Well, it would have been nice if she'd have told me any of these things. So I got nothing out of it. So we go and like I said, yes I do get groped in this one. It's it because the ideal or the the person said to me, I need to check you for a wire. Well, underneath my right armpit is where I have the Celtic body wire and it runs underneath my underwire brawl and comes right straight dead center cleavage. Because most men always would address me and talk to me and talk to my boobs. That's just what they did. So it made for great recording sounds and stuff. So I mean it's just from those les and then the antenna you would kind of keep that into the bra strap, you know, kind of up so that because they had an antenna wire that went with. Yeah, because it's a it's a transmitter, and I think, yeah, to give it, I guess the best way to explain it it is about it's not as thick, but it's about the size of a deck of cards. It's just it's or like a smaller cell phone and or and they get yeah, and they get really hot sometimes, especially if if you're sweating, or if it happens to touch on anything metal or anything metallic. It heats it up quick. It heats up, really gets hot. I mean it gets like it's it's burning, like it will leave a blister on you. Right, you know, you'll get to part of it. Part of your undercover work is like just trying to navigate a wire, yeah, and not getting backed. So first thing I do is I got those little mini socks, little little ones, little anklets, and put it in that because that's like a little block between my skin and that, and then kind of put it up right next to the bron and then make sure I've got like a tape to make sure not going to go anywhere, right, But if you start padding me down, that would be the normal. You'd find that. Well, if you found that on the opposite side, I've got a cold Mustang Light three eighty, so I've got six rounds on that side of me, and I've got this on the other side of me. She's gonna find water boat at the same time. Everything. No, this was a female. Her name was Connie. Connie was pimping out her sixteen year old daughter to I guess anybody, and so you know, back in when sex trafficking wasn't a term, but that's what she was doing. And it was all over prescription drugs. Connie was into the prescription drugs before anybody really. The state had just formed in eighty eight their Drug Diversion Unit, and so it was just a few people around the state and Special Agent Greg Lamb was one of them, and he asked, they had asked, would I go to this person's place, and this is what we've been told by what the informant was, And I's gonna go over here to Fishersville, Virginia, this apartment complex and you got to buy makeup for her from her what it's like. Yeah, she sells avon somebody like that, so you'll have to buy makeup from her before she'll discuss business with you. Okay. So I go over and the first time i'm there, she's very handsy and very flirty and very happy, go lucky and just little miss makeup salesperson. So I'm trying to buy like the lauded or Valume something something there, and she sells me makeup first. As soon as I buy the makeup, then we're all about business. I can now buy the drugs, so I buy a couple of pills, you know, get that. It's all good, no problem. And we did all of that just standing inside the apartment. It was perfect. So the next time I go by, she's all upset when I get there, that Lee, how come you don't have your makeup on you? Because she told me I makeup. Well, here's the problem. I use state police money to buy the eye makeup. It's therefore part of the evidence, so they locked it up. So I don't have the makeup to put on because they put it in evidence. Yes, and I don't need to spend fifteen dollars to buy a whole I make au eyeshadowed. Thing to do somewhere to what. But she knew exactly what she sold you. She knew exactly what she sold me. And she's so happy to see me back again. And I'm standing there and I just want three the laud It's or two the Lord. This is actually what I came for. But I get there to buy. This and it's like okay, and she's on me. She says, oh yea would look so pretty and make up beloved that I want you to talk to my daughter. You used to meet my daughter. Why don't she come upstairs with me? And I'm just like, no, I'm good, you know, because I'm not going upstairs right everything, and the sixteen year old is not dressed appropriately for company in the house right at all, like not even close. And it's it's just it's, uh, it's an off feeling. Everything about is off right. And she goes, why don't you wait down here then on the couch, wait for us right here on the couch and anything like that, and we'll hang out with I'm just like I didn't want to hang out. I'm like, okay, so I picked this far corner of the couch. She goes, upstairs. While she's upstairs. In this minutes that are passing, the daughter keeps coming down the steps and back up and down the steps and back up, and I'm just like, this is weird. This is creepy, weird, everything about it is and all, and it's just like, somebody needs to teach you about wearing appropriate clothing. But this is really bad. And here comes Connie back downstairs. She just plops down on the couch right beside me, and she goes, I've got to check you for a wire, and she doesn't really check me for a wire. She actually sexually gropes me, and I realize I've just been sexually assaulted all in this momentary second because I'm trying to stand up out of the corner of that couch at the same time all this is happening. You can't get up quick enough, and it's. Kind of over with, and all you know is that this person has actually felt your boobs up and your crotch, but didn't find the body wire and didn't find the gun. So you're kind of like offended that they groped you, but happy that they didn't find your wire. Exactly. I'm I'm violated, but I'm still in the game. Score one for the score one for the home game. I survived you. All my thoughts were is I can't believed that this did not just happen. And she's just all giggly happy, and she's holding me by the hand and she goes, look what I got you, And she's giving me the de Laudeds and she gives me three, which i'd only bought was buying two, and she goes, this will take the edge off. We should take them now, we should do them now. And I'm thinking, I said, well, I got a job interview down at whatever gas station and stuff, so I can't do them right now. And I've got to leave. And all I could think was I've got to go. I've got to go. I'm so glad I'm standing up and I've got to go because I'm not going to sit back down and I'm not going to stay here. Lord knows she's going to do next. And this is all weird. And she's still talking about how I'm welcome to join her and her daughter upstairs, and I'm just sort of like, this is weird. Oh. There's a lot of things that were coming out of her mouth, and it was like, this is. So did you ever figure out what what she was trying to get you to do or. What we think and what was coming up and all? And what later gets learned when they go back and talk to this informing person is I would just be working just like her daughter would basically just you know, bring you. Further into the business and becoming room. This is how you can make money. And you come on over here and hang out and will us all party and we'll just entertain the people who come by, because that's money making, just like the pain pills were. And she was shopping all up and down the Interstate eighty one and down the sixty four corridor. When they finally did the search warrants, they're finding hundreds of bottles either empty or full or half full of pills that she's been shopping from various doctors and various pharmacies. And with all of that, this is before the state has the system they're wanting to sister track. But they have the trafficking system, it wasn't there yet, and so. There's no So each doctor all they knew is she came in, paid for a visit, had a medical condition, and they fill the script. And you're going back because it's sort of like you're embarrassed because you know the guys that are sitting out in the car and know that you got groped when you went inside, you know, and you're trying to explain that nobody said anything about this, so you do doesn't tell me what is this whole thing? Sorry about that? And I get that, but at the same time, it's just like, really need to tell I don't want to go back there. Can we not go back there again? Can we count that as number three? The third vill you know? And of course they were good, they were able to do. Like I said, there's search warts and stuff there and all. But if we knew then kind of what we know now on the sex trafficking, there would have been more ways to work that, I think, and and take it all in. I don't think from the person who was providing the information because it was a female, I don't think they knew enough about it. But I saw and heard enough that gave me the you get the willies, the creeps that and there's more than what I'm saying. There's just that knowledge of the just like this is terrible, this is and what do you you really want to wring your neck and there's nothing. You can do now he said, to sit there and take the groping. Yeah, that's pretty much. So one of the things that I've always tried to do is I've always tried to like have especially people that have experienced law enforcement like you've experienced. And as we close out the interview, first of I'll give you a chance. Is there anything else like that's in the book without telling all the stories? Is there any other story you'd like to tell kind of about what happened in the book. And then well, I'd like to go over a couple of things to round it out. I think with the book. First of all, what's the name of the book. Name of my book is called Becoming Fire. And then the subtitle is Chasing the Passion to Tech, Serve and Love, a true crime memoir and we kind of cover the police procedurals as true crime. And it's my memoir. So it's my story. So if you really hate my story, it is just my life. Don't worry about it. That's right, Like, don't complain about my life. I had to live it, right, I lived it. And the title Becoming Fire, people ask when we get that. I feel like, at some point in your life, something has that spark in you and it's there and it kind of sticks with you, and eventually that either turns into a flame and starts burning and you start chasing those passions that what you really want to do, or you let someone snuff that out. It gets put out and you never do that and you look back like, man, I wonder if I had just done this, if I had just tried this, But I didn't do it because of this or that. And so it's when I start out with the State Police. It's definitely just a candle flame level of things. But everything I took in and everything I did, I was learning from it, and that flame and that fire was burning brighter. One of the things that I would like people to know, I don't I write about the things that went on as a trooper and went on as an undercover and a little bit about my personal life in there. But I didn't see my book as this thing of hey, everybody treated me wrong and I got a bum deal, and there was. This is not a this is not ay I've been wrong book. It is a book. It is a book about to me what I hear is this is a book about what we all go through, which is striving to be better and driven and being driven towards what is really important to us. And what you saw as a trooper and as eventually as an agent drew you into what is going to be next book, right exactly is like the next like the next step for you. And I think that's what's really cool is that, like you go through all these things in life, and I think people can like prepare you in a lot of different ways, but like you said, like you know what you were. I feel like most people know this is what I want to do. This is what when I look in the mirror and I go or I lay my head on my pill at night, even after being groped or anything else, you realize that what you did was good and was necessary and just fed that fire. Right, and that's exactly what it's doing. And so I felt like I am becoming fire. I am I am, I am learning and I'm getting better at this and I love what I'm doing. I had a passion for the job, you know. I'd love to say it's all about wanting to help people and to be able to protect and that sort of thing, and that's a good part of it. But I like the adventure too. I mean, who doesn't like getting to drive at high rates of speed, right? Who doesn't want to tackle a bad guy and be able to put the handcuffs on them and take them off the street and get them away from people. So those things great, and the undercover world is not Hollywood, and at the same time, it does require a lot of you, and it is a stress inducing thing, and the longer you're in it, it becomes there. So the book is kind of, I guess in stages because you're starting out with me basically. With a bank, like a blank canvas, nothing, I know nothing. I get into it and I was fortunate enough and you'll meet these people in the book, a few of them to be around, men who encouraged me and taught me things and pointed out things like I told you about Trooper Bray, the things he's teaching me out there that night. I'm absorbing it just like a sponge because it was I was learning and everything was a learning experience from me just the whole time I was just making it all in. It was like, Okay, this is I'm going to need this at some point and because. They are further along in their career, they know you need that. They just have to slow down long. Enough to like teach you, yeah, and let you, let you make mistakes, because you're going to make mistakes, and that the state Police is all about not making mistakes, but people are going to make mistakes that you're new. You can't learn it all from an ft an FDO, can't teach it all. Academies can't teach it all. It just like I said, it just kept growing and I kept doing. And then there was this whole thing I knew in the academy. I wanted to be a special agent. I wanted to investigate crime. I learned that just and I realized it, and it was like, how do I get to that goal I'd already got. I'm just barely at the academy and I'm already thinking, how do I get to the next goal? How do I get to the next goal? And I've met a lot of women over the years who have told me, I wish I had done something like you did. I wish I had thought about it. I wanted to do it, but I didn't. And I understand that. I get that, and to have people I wish, you know, you tell your stories. Why don't you write them? Why don't you tell them? And stuff? And I'm like, I will one these days, So here I am. The other thing was, of course, when I came through with the State Police, there weren't a lot of females. It was very new. The federal law was nineteen seventy two. The Virginia State Police hired their very first female in nineteen seventy six. The Virginia State Police promoted their very first two females in nineteen eighty six. One was promoted to sergeant, one was promoted to special agent. Now they had to meet all of the qualifications that were required for that at that point. You know, there's your evaluation, your panel interview, your test scores for those particular occupations. But when I was there, you know, they just it was very few, you know, so having another female and another female there was one when I got to Division five, Avery thirty two in that area. She'd been there five years. Everybody loved working with her, but she left. She she had another She had something else she wanted to do in life, and she did great at that. She was great at being a State trooper. Then they eventually brought in a couple more females down to work where I was at, and you know, we were friends. We talked to each other, you know, in the office and occasionally out. But everybody's got their own life, and everybody had their own goal of what they wanted to accomplish. And the State, as I was always told, is they're very traditional, They're very set in their ways. It will be a long time before you will be promoted. And it's not just you, it's everybody. And when I got there and was talking to people, the least amount of time anybody could think of somebody becoming a special agent male or female, was seven years, and many people it was twelve to fifteen years, but ten seemed to be about the average. By the time somebody had a high enough evaluation that was a big deal timing the job, then the test scores for that position, then the panel interview for that position, and then there's only so many positions. Open, and it's just when they fall right, really. So you you had to sit there and go, that's ten years down the road, you know, how can I make it go faster? And the one thing I'd been told was if you ever get a chance to work undercover full time. They kept saying, that'll help. So right, So that's what you did well. So my question as we wrap it up here is, first of all, tell everybody to go out and get the book at the end of October. Yes, where's it going to be available at. You'll see it on various websites, and we'll be advertising through Facebook and Instagram and maybe some other sites, but we'll maybe Amazon for sure, good Reads for sure. Let's see, it'll be through my website. That'll be out there for as a book author. H Then there will also be a lot of your smaller libraries also Barnes and Noble. Oh cool, But you'll have to. Go in and either order it through my you tell them my name and or the name of the book Becoming Fire and then Jennifer Escue or Jennifer Clark Escue and they can pull it up and order it for you, because you know, until you get known, I'm not James Patterson yet, so I hold my book. We'll see what happens. So my question in the interview is this. I had a lot of people sitting in that chair that have talked about their careers and things like that. But like for you, in the effort that you had to go into and not having a guidebook to go by, what can law enforcement today with all the information technology and everything else do better at I've got something that popped in my head, so I'll let you. I'll let can you tell me what you based on what I heard from you today? Is what we can do better is law enforcement is trained the next generation of law enforcement exactly, take the time and have them learn the job. If we should expect them to make mistakes, but prepare them to take fill the space that we are going to vacate at some point when we retire. Absolutely, and I think it's imperative that the older generations that we impart what we know to help them, not to belittle them, not to make fun, not to the better yeah I'm so great, No, no, not, but getting them ready and teaching them ways. I do think that the best training methodologies come from case studies and hands on because they take in so much more and we've got so many more ways to display that to them through video and PowerPoint and just like yeah. I mean I think an officer survival how many like it used to when we were when we were going through we'd have videos that were like twenty and they were really grainy and everything else, and like for me, everybody's wearing a body camera. Now you can make changes on the fly. Yes, And I think that's what's really cool. So that stuff is out there, and I think that we use those tools and we train them. I think that our recruiting on these things, we need to be making sure that there are explorer troops available across the country so that young people who have an interest in that have a place and outlet to learn and they don't feel embarrassed to ask the questions about it. I didn't have anybody to ask back then, so I asked my dad out. But you were fortunate enough with someone who believed in you as a person and said, I like the where you're going, but you're going to do it this way. So hey, I really appreciate you coming on. I wish you a lot of luck on that book. If it's anything like what you told us today, which I know it is, it's going to be a great It's going to be a great read. So thank you for your time and thank you for coming on. Thank you very much for having us
