They are supported by Texas Mutual Workers Compensation Insurance Company.

You just can't be scared.

You have to know your limits.

You know there is value in listening to the next generation.

We need more positive role models, and I think we need to still continue to make a difference.

LA And welcome to Salud Celebrating San Antonio Latino Leaders.

I'm your host, Melanie Mendez Gonzalez.

On this episode, we're going to focus on the world of law enforcement and lawyers where San Antonio Latinos are stepping up.

One guest is leading young Latinas lawyers and another is leading an entire department, a law enforcement, after 30 years in the field.

But our first guest has a background that could have led in a far different direction.

Detective Gloria Torres shows how developing leadership skills can open up a world of new possibilities.

Famous said The exciting thing about police work is never the same party as a talent.

Describe what your job is in the detective with the San Antonio Police Department in the robbery unit.

We investigate all robberies, bank robberies, robberies and individual robberies of businesses.

What is it like to be a female detective in the San Antonio Police Department?

It's a big circus.

It's.

It's different, I think, coming from the Marine Corps, where I was the only female with 300 guys to come in to do this.

It kind of prepared me.

I know how guys talk.

I know how they act.

I know their sense of humor.

I know the way they have trust issues with the female.

But then I also see they want to protect you like their little sister.

And you have to tell them I got this.

Like, let me let me grow.

And it's just nature that once they've been taught, protect the female.

I think it's a growing it's a learning experience for both.

But once you have it, it's just like sister, brother, I'll do anything for you.

You'll do anything for me.

Let's work together as a team.

It's great once you build that bond.

So what are some of your or at least one of your biggest challenges in your work?

One of my biggest challenges is they look at me and they underestimate me.

They're like, That's a girl.

And not just with going to a new unit or applying for a position saying, I want to do it.

It's a girl.

Can she do it?

You know?

Yeah, But is on the street, too going to cause pulling people out of a vehicle?

You could see it in their criminal heads.

They're looking and they're analyzing.

Well, this is going to be the weaker link.

Let's go after her.

And it's happened, you know.

So just always being prepared.

And I love that they underestimate me because then the value comes out, you know?

So I use it as a tool, you know.

But also carry yourself professionally, know where you come from.

Be humble about it, but also bring something to the table.

Be prepared.

You know, some of these criminals are smart, very, very smart.

And I want to take this.

They're like, We see you're not scared of work.

Do you want to go special assignment to work with DEA, ATF, Secret Service?

And I always saw it as an opportunity to learn something new to help my career.

So anything they said, they're like, Yes, yes.

I said, I don't know what I'm doing, but yes.

Would you like to work undercover?

Yes.

Tell me about your first undercover assignment.

So my first covert assignment was I remember they recruited me and they said they're usually good at recruiting the females younger on the department.

And they said, you're going to be a prostitute.

And I was looking at it like the movie Pretty Woman.

I'm going to straighten my hair, do my nails.

I went and got a pedicure.

I was like, I got to look pretty.

Yeah.

And I remember calling my dad and telling my dad excited.

And I said, I'm going to work over that.

And he was just like, What are you going to be doing?

I said, I a prostitute.

He was just like, Oh, Claudia, like, I hear it in your voice.

You sound excited about this opportunity that I am.

So I remember showing them.

They're like, You look too clean.

He's like, You look to put together, you have all your teeth.

And I was just like, No, they don't know what they're talking about.

There was undercover detectives around me and they could hear me, but I couldn't hear them.

And there was an old people in there and they said, Just pretend you're waiting for people.

And they said, But you can't call them.

They have to come to you.

And I remember nobody was stopping in Missouri over an hour.

And then finally someone stopped and he offered me a Lonestar card.

So there was a lot of things that I learned from there.

And I remember there was a Walgreens behind us and some guy ran into the Walgreens and it was just instinct that the minute he came across the parking lot and was coming towards me, I tackled him.

So they looked at me and they're like, Yeah, we just blew it.

I said it was just an instinct that you were trained to do.

Yes.

Yeah.

So how do you compartmentalize or you do so many different things.

So I think it comes with time and experience and maturity.

I'm a mom of four kids, so I have to learn how to balance work and life.

And it's a very stressful job.

There's so much to do.

There's so many checklists.

So I think it's just a matter of balancing it and know your limits.

What would you say to another young Latina in the force who wants to follow your footsteps in the way that you wanted to follow the detective's footsteps?

So I guess it's different for us because it's female.

Some of us are mothers and some of us put our family first.

What works best?

So we'll usually pick a position that's going to benefit our life.

You just can't be scared.

You have to know your limits.

But you also have to know that your family is with you.

At the end of the day, this job is going to remember how many hours or countless sleepless nights you did.

You have to do that, but you also have to follow your heart and do what you're passionate about.

And don't be scared to do it.

It's intimidating.

It's scary to go into something you don't know or how is someone going to react?

I know, I know.

This is a male dominant environment and I'm not blind to that.

So going into any new unit, the guys are looking at you as just another girl.

Like, What are you going to bring to the table?

I know I can't take down this six foot, £300 guy.

I know my limits, but I'm confident enough to know that I'm bringing something else to the table that they can't.

You know, women on the department show a lot more sympathy for empathy to situations that they feel more comfortable talking to them.

And I think that's my strong point, is interrogating people.

Speaking to them, I will always speak to someone as they're human.

And my dad's always said, treat others the way you want to be treated.

If someone is getting arrested, I don't know you from before this.

This is the unfortunate incident where we're meeting and you have a story and a reason why we've come to this point.

I imagine that other in particular women are looking at you.

What do you want them to know as your leadership style?

I would say always lead by example.

Always carry yourself with confidence.

You know, don't take shortcuts.

Ask questions.

If they see you getting in the groin, get in the middle of it.

I'm going to expect you to be right behind me and doing it.

If I see someone doing something wrong, don't not so much be left alone, but correct them and let them know that's not okay.

Yeah, I guess not being scared to have a voice.

It is.

But also respectfully and tactfully.

You can't assume that everybody is just like you.

Everybody is different.

Everyone learns differently.

Everyone has different sensitive tempers or attitudes towards things.

You don't know what's going on in their personal life that something negative talk to people, communication is the main thing in everything.

As someone who is always a minority, as a woman in a male dominated field, there's more women that are joining now.

What are your hopes and visions for the women in the police force?

My hopes is that they see bigger roles in themselves, that they take bigger parts.

They're not scared or they're not intimidated that well, a guy is usually in charge of that team or that unit not being afraid to step into those big shoes, you know, and take charge.

Not caring what people say about you and still being able to show, look at what I can do.

Let me let me show you.

So I think and I hope that I'll start growing and growing and we are seeing a lot more females, the most females that we've ever seen in classes for before.

You should only be two or three in a class.

Now there's ten in the class, like, Oh wow, there's not enough showers for everybody at the academy.

How are we going to do this?

So it's changing.

It's it's evolving.

And it's new times here.

That's great.

Well, thank you for being that leader in that role of recruiting more women.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

And what I love most about this room and it's one of my favorite places on campus is Henry Gonzalez's office set up from when he was in Congress.

And I am very inspired by his work.

What inspired you to start a network for Latina lawyers?

So it was really my own story.

My first experience working in the law was at the best place possible.

MALDEF in their D.C. office.

And there I was surrounded by Latina excuse me, by Latina attorneys and I was in charge of the law clerks and legal interns.

And they would come in from law schools across the country and talk about how working at MALDEF was the first time they saw Latino lawyers in action.

So coming to Saint Mary's and here in San Antonio, where there are an abundance of Latino lawyers, but even with an abundance, they're not very many of us still.

I decided to create a in an environment that I wish existed, which was a collective of Latina lawyers.

And that's how the idea began.

And it's just grown from there to now.

Having three tracks available to help students get into law school, the pre-law track, the law student track to help law students become the best students they can be and get the best grades possible.

And then the lawyer track.

That's amazing.

I find it really fascinating that someone as young as you are, I would say they take it upon themselves to create this needed network.

An organization described to me what it's like to be a young leader.

Do you think of yourself that way?

I just felt like I could do anything here at Saint Mary's.

And so I was involved in several organizations, was on our move court team, was editor in chief of the Law Review for Race and Social Justice and also founder of the Latina Network.

And I just found that if there are people who support what you're doing and are willing to, you know, be on the board and help, it's something that is worthwhile.

And that's what motivated me to do all of these additional things on top of doing law school.

Tell me about getting into law school or following this path to become a lawyer.

So I did not grow up thinking I wanted to be a lawyer.

In fact, I always thought I would be a teacher.

My mom is a teacher and that's the road I thought I was going to take.

In undergrad.

I studied public health, so not pre-law.

But there I took a class about health policy and I got interested in policy.

So I applied for an internship to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute to work on the Hill to learn more about health policy.

And it was there where the people who I thought were really cool, I got their business cards and they all had a JD like Google Docs.

I didn't even know what J.D.

meant, and I realized they were lawyers.

So I decided after my internship on the Hill, I was going to work at a law firm just to see what it was like.

So I really didn't even know what lawyers did.

I had an experience of my own having pressed charges against somebody and seeing a lawyer in that capacity.

And I thought, that's really cool that they stood up for me but never considered becoming a lawyer.

And it wasn't until I worked at MALDEF and saw how they represented the legal community in court across all the states.

I was very empowering for me, and that's when I realized, okay, this is what I want to do.

It was very striking to see a team of Latina attorneys go up in federal court against, you know, the Department of Justice, other places, and just see the differences in the legal teams and just really think like, wow, Latinos are out here doing the most incredible work.

Maybe I could do that.

But what drove you to continue to go on?

When when it felt really hard?

I'm very driven by my family in particular, my mom.

My mom is an immigrant in her family, all her brothers and sisters.

When they came to the country, they were migrant farmworkers and they worked so hard doing manual labor in the fields the majority of the year.

And whenever I felt down, I would just think, okay, I'm not out of the field, I'm not picking vegetables, I'm just sitting here in air conditioning studying.

So that was a big motivation for me to keep pursuing and pushing when it got challenging.

But also the side of their story and the discrimination they received.

They actually marched with Cesar Chavez in California for better rights.

And my mom now she was able to go to school, became a teacher, vice principal principal, worked her way up to director of migrant services in her district and seeing the change that she's made for students who are just like her inspired me to do the same.

Who have been your mentor?

Oh, my goodness.

I've been incredibly fortunate to have great mentors.

My first mentor in the legal field was Andrea Santana.

She is Regional council of the Washington, D.C., MALDEF office, and she encouraged me to take all that to apply to law school.

She gave me so many opportunities and she's helped me along the way.

And here at Saint Mary's, our dean of law school, Patty Roberts, has been an incredible mentor to me and supporter of the Latina network.

She's not Latina and she shows me the importance of having allies that are not Latinos, But they're still in your corner.

100%, I say.

She's an honorary Latina up here on campus because she goes above and beyond for the student organization and summit and as well as my mom, she's always been there for me and guides me through so many things, is beautiful and so special.

You also these are the officers that do all the work.

Let's start with you sharing with us what do you do?

Okay, so the constables office, they it's not criminal.

Even though a lot of criminals do falls in our lap, The main the main thing that the constables office does is civil process.

So what does that mean?

You're talking about rid of possessions, which is like an eviction.

We do protective orders, we do rid of attachments, which means that sometimes we have a mother and father battling and the children were taken by someone that's not supposed to have them.

We go and get the children by the judge's orders.

That's signed by the judges orders, stuff like that.

And what do you personally do, Constable?

Do you go with the team who does that?

I used to do stuff like that before because I was with the sheriff's office for 25 years.

But now I mainly stay in the office because while they're out in the field is also we have court going on, we have a front door that the public walk in.

So a lot of times when my guys are out in the field, I try and stay here at the office in case there is an incident or something.

They still have me.

Sometimes the tax office calls a probation office call, so my vehicles out there, me and the chief, we usually stay in the office and we'll jump in our vehicles and go and investigate.

So let's back up a little bit and tell me a little bit about your career, how you ended up when you started and how you ended up here in this office.

I started at the sheriff's office for 25 years ago, started at the jail, went to the courthouse, was in Dare I was a deer instructor for a little while.

And there got this band that at one point.

So we went to patrol.

So I was on patrol for about 14 years.

And then from there, Sheriff Salazar was in the office at that time and he started to score, which is a like community policing.

So I joined that and I was there for about four years.

And then eventually something happened here at this office where they needed someone to put an application.

And I was appointed to take over this office that was supposed to stay here for 15 months and then vacate so other people could run.

Well, things started to change, so a lot of people started inquiring if I was going to run or not.

I started getting some pressure.

Uh, things started to get a little kind of hasty with people.

They were trying to get pushy, so and some of the people that were running, I just wasn't comfortable with them coming into the office after we had done so much to clean up and fix and get the integrity back and all that stuff.

So I decided to run and I want to congratulate.

Thank you.

Yes, yes.

Along the way, what kind of challenges have you faced in your career?

I wanted to get in law enforcement since I was in middle school, like I was in maybe elementary.

I always wanted to be a police officer.

I always, even though I was the only girl in my family, I have three brothers and I was the only girl I always wanted to be in law enforcement.

So I always wanted to be that cop, you know?

But I got married, had my three daughters, so I put that on hold.

So I actually didn't start the sheriff's office till I was 35, which was kind of old compared to everybody that was in the cadet class with me.

So being at the jail, being at the courthouse, being in there, yes.

I mean, I was out there as a female officer, but I didn't really feel any kind of resistance towards my with my fellow officers until I went to patrol, because at that time there was still very few female patrolmen.

So I had to work hard at not being a female officer that being recognized as a officer.

I didn't want them to see.

I didn't want to stand to see the female.

I wanted them to see that I was equal to men.

I wanted them to have confidence in me.

When I went to calls and I wanted them to feel like if I showed up for backup, they knew they were in good hands and vice versa.

So being around, working with the community and being around them, you know, sometimes having a female officer there, we were the one.

And being a mom, you know, being able to control the situation better than some of them male officers that wanted to be all guns.

And, you know, so so I think that that some of the supervisors recognized that and saw that I could be an asset that way.

What kind of advice to give to Latinas who want to go in the armed forces?

Well, I mean, it's a great career and I think it still is.

And I think we need to still continue to make a difference.

We are if I could say anything, we law enforcement officers do not like that.

Law enforcement officers.

We also don't like that.

So we need more positive role models.

How else would you describe your leadership style?

What you see is what you get.

My door is always open.

I don't I don't put myself above anybody else.

I worked in the trenches and I don't ask them to do anything that I wouldn't do.

So I'm curious because you said you're the only girl, three brothers, and you always wanted to be a cop.

What was it about being a police officer that attracted you to the service?

I think because their public servants, you know, they they help people.

I've always wanted to help everybody.

I mean, I came in at the beginning.

I want to rescue and save everybody.

And I realized that that's that's not possible.

But if I can make a difference to 1 to 310, hopefully by now hundreds, then I've done something.

You know, my father and mother were buried.

My father was.

So he had the hugest, biggest heart he loved.

And also I love animals.

My mom was my mom was something else.

She was hell on wheels, so to say.

So I guess I get that from her.

But they were very My mom and dad would help everybody.

Can you share a little bit more about who instilled your wanting to give back to your community and of course, your strong work ethic?

Like I mentioned, my family, my parents.

So I always keep this on my desk.

This is a picture of my my parents.

So this is my uncle, but this is my father, my mother and my grandfather.

And look where they're at.

They're out there picking onions and potatoes.

Whenever I think about how hard they worked to make a difference for us.

And I remember, you know, hearing the stories of how how hard they had it right.

You know, I have no reason to complain.

You know, they were working out there for a nickel a bag.

And here, you know, how can I how can I not continue to work hard for them?

So thank you for leading your department to do that, for the community and for yourself.

Thank you for allowing me to tell my story.

And I spoke to you.

Nice to meet you.

This is so much inspiration.

It was great to hear from Briana Chapa who is heading up Latinas.

Constable Leticia Vasquez, who helps keep our community safe, and Detective Gladiator Ortiz, who shows that grit and determination lead to success.

I hope you enjoyed the conversations and don't forget to join us next time for another edition of Salud Notes.

Vemos, supported by Texas Mutual Workers Compensation Insurance Company.