SHE WORE A TOY BADGE AT FIVE—NOW SHE’S LEADING THE FORCE

I remember the cheap plastic badge digging into my chest and my oversized blue costume drooping past my knees. I was five. It was Halloween. And I knew—with the kind of certainty only kids can have—that I was going to be a cop one day. Nobody took me seriously, of course. My Aunt Cici laughed and said, “Aww, how cute. Next year she’ll want to be a princess.” But I didn’t change my mind. Not when the other girls traded their plastic batons for wands. Not when I got older and the guys in high school said I was “too soft” for that kind of work. I worked night shifts at a diner to pay my way through the academy. Some nights I’d walk home dead tired, with my shoes soaked from snowmelt and my hands trembling from pouring coffee for ten hours. I kept my badge from that Halloween on my mirror—just to remind myself why I was doing it. The first time I made a traffic stop alone, my heart was pounding so hard I thought the driver could hear it. But I did it. Then came tougher calls. Domestic disputes. Overdoses. One time, a hostage situation that still wakes me up at 3 a.m. with sweat down my back. But I kept going. I never quit. Last week, I got promoted to sergeant. I walked into my new office and found a little box sitting on my desk. Inside was that same Halloween badge—bent, faded, but still intact. My dad had saved it all these years. I looked at it, and for the first time, I cried. Not because I’d made it. But because somewhere, that five-year-old girl knew she would. And now… the little girls in my neighborhood ask to take pictures with me when I’m in uniform. But here’s the part I’ve never told anyone—not even my partner. The night before my final academy test… I almost walked away. ??