Appochet production. So I mean they would be in class and there would be shootings and we would just go under the table. But the problem was that there were so much gang activity in Cicero. There was so much gang activity. You know. Obviously Chicago is infamous for gangs like other big cities, but the Mexican or Hispanic gangs
were huge in Cicero. They still are. And yeah, and you know, they would be fighting back and forth with each other, and that's usually what the cause of the violence was, is gang activity, gang violence.
What would have happened if your friend was a relative of a rival gang and they didn't know and they've killed, what would have happened?
Then, Oh god, there would be a lot of other heads rolling around for sure, because you know how it is. It's gang violence, just like cartel violence. They don't there's no mercy. You know. I've worked at the border and seen firsthand the cartel violence, and it's some of the stuff I would never wish anybody to see. The things that I've seen, you know, and I'm talking about bodies that have been fully skinned and are tied to trees, or you know, dismembered bodies or bodies hanging off of
bridges like lynchings. It's crazy.
So while you're in school and you're leaving school, you'd already picked what kind of a job you wanted to do after this.
Yes, yes, I picked my job based on my pain. And I share this internationally every time I get on a stage. I share this with people. Is most people that join the government or join FBID you know CIA, they do it because of some type of trauma. We didn't just watch a movie one day and say, hey, we want to go save the world. We do it because we have a deeper connection to the job, because this is a type of job that some of us don't survive. And it's not luxurious, and it's not it's
it's exciting, but it's very dangerous. And I don't think people, you know, the media and the movies make it seem like it's very logist.
It's no, we are not.
Let me tell you. We are not riding around in lambos and going to lavish parties like Double the Seven.
Not at all.
We are literally in the slums in the ship trying to fit in to our surroundings. By no means that I ever drive no lambo and have beautiful hair and I was just flying out the side. No, it was never like that. I had guns to my head, I had hands on my throat, you know, punches to my face like this.
No, so what what did you actually join the department?
So I graduated college in four, I went in in O six, So I started doing undercover work in six. I did undercover work from six to eight, and then in eight I was transferred to Houston to start doing more of the interrogations. So I have to say this because I feel like me getting transferred to Houston to do interrogations on criminals, drug dealers, murders, traffickers. You know, all of that saved my life literally, because I don't think I would have survived much longer doing undercover work
with the technology that we started seeing. Because keep in mind, when I was doing undercover work, the first iPhone had just came out, and so we were doing old school
undercover work where we're in the bushes hiding. Nowadays, I can sit here and track you all the way in Australia and you know, hack into your phone and I know exactly where you're at, what time you're sleeping, what time your alarm was off, what time you're leaving your house, what time you turn on your car, because now everything
is digital and we can hack into everything. So it really is a gift for me to be able to speak on how it is to do old school when you're in the van holding the camera and driving the car at the same time, Like, we don't have to do that anymore.
While you were doing that, did you ever get like, did you ever get SOT out or on the cod Yeah?
Yeah, So my cover was blown. I was in upstate New York by myself, okay, and this was probably more undercover than not, because I did was undercover, and I went into a cartel member's wife's business and I was getting my hair done by the wife. And you know, back then, the tech, like I said, the technology wasn't
as good as now. So I had a purse that we had cut a hole in the purse, and we had a camera inside the purse, so I see situated the purse so that whenever she was doing my hair, you could see the activity that was happening in the back. So at the same time that I went to go get my hair dyed by the wife, they were bringing in cocaine from the back and they were putting it in bottles of you know, shampoo, and so the camera
was catching this activity. Well she was like, oh, yeah, the weather in New York, you know, blah blah blah, and you could see the activity. She had no idea, but that's how we found out that there was this activity happening. So I had to go in there and act as a client and say, oh, yeah, I'm here from out of town. I have to you dye my hair black. So yeah, wow, what was I was? I was caught, you know. I and I say this in the book For those that don't know, I have a
book out. It's called Through These Brown Eyes. I speak. I speak very lightly on this stuff because we're gonna let the movie speak more of it. But I was caught and they so I was in upstate New York and you know, it's very mountainous and it was in the middle of winter. They tried to crash my van so that it would go over the side of the mountain. So that in the movies is true. They do do that.
Oh wow. Well instead of doing that, I was like, look, you kind of start thinking about what your chances are of survival. So I was like, I don't want to plumb it to my death. That's that's not my first choice. So I stopped and I surrendered. Now at the time, I'm forty one now, but at the time I was twenty three, so I look very young. So my twenty three was probably looking like sixteen. And I think that that actually saved me, because they could have killed me.
They could have killed me, but they didn't. They also did not take any of my limbs, and they didn't disfigure me. Usually when you are caught, they cut your limbs off or they disfigure you, because it's almost like this is your parting gift. Thank you. Now you're disfigured or you're missing some limbs. And I think they felt bad for me. I mean, they still beat me, but it wasn't to the point where I'm disfigured. And obviously
I went through the trauma. But I always say this story, and I said this on another stage that I got on and I hit up Verizon. But when I was taken, I had two phones. I had my personal phone and my government phone. My personal phone was t Mobile. That shit. They grabbed it and they threw it, but I grabbed my Verizon phone, and I stuck it in my bra so because I knew that as soon as the van would start moving, they would know my location because of
the tower. Back then, your phones would ping off of towers to get your location. That's old school technology. So that's the only way that I was found because of Verizon. So I always tell Verizon, and I still to this day have Verizon because of that, and I will not get any other phone service because Verizon saved my life. It's crazy.
How was your How was your cover blown?
So my cover was blown because I was following them and they saw me following them. Here's the thing about doing surveillance is that when you're in upstate New York and you're the only two cars out there, it's it's gonna be very difficult. Now if if I would have done that same that same undercover work, now things would have been different. I could have been sitting in a cabin in the top of the mountain. They would have
never known because of the technology. But back then, if you're following somebody and you're in a rural area upstate New York, it's literally them in the car, so they're like, who the fuck is following them. Yeah, so to my defense, I was it almost was like it was inevitable, it was going to happen.
So do you think do you think also what said because you were you buy yourself, you said.
By myself a lot of a lot of these smaller missions we did on our own.
Yeah, do you think that saved your life too? Because if you the being of a for sure?
Oh yeah, they would have killed us both and threw us over the mountain for sure. Oh yeah. The power of a woman to a man is, you know, it's effortless because we and I think I always talk about this as well, is when I go into an interrogation room, I don't look like an interrogator. They think I'm a psychologist, but I am the interrogator. But my tactics and the
way that I finesse them is totally different. I get them so comfortable that they think I am the therapist that they start talking about their childhood, and then I literally ignite the child in them and they start crying, and then they just start divulging information. A man can't do that, and so I think that's why I became very successful as an interrogat because I was able to tap into the child of the perpetrator. So men can't
do that. You know. Men come in and they're like, tell me this motherfucker and then they just they shut down. But a woman's power is totally different.
So, wow, what was it? So we'll just go back. I just want to know about your first assignments and what it felt like to get your first assignments.
Oh my goodness, My first assignments were very The first ones were easy. The first ones were just surveillance. So surveillance, you know, you just follow people and for those that don't know. Whenever you're working on these huge cartel or even corporate fraud cases, a lot of evidence is needed and we're talking years of evidence, and so a lot of it is digital evidence, phone conversations. We need to
have incriminating information that is videotaped and audio recorded. So a lot of my first stuff was just me following you around. I would follow you around for days, like
four or five days, and you never knew. I was like in the bushes in your yard with the camera through your windows, like listening to all your calls, conversations, following you around to see your patterns, what time you get up what time you leave, what time, what time you're meeting up, what time the runs are happening, stuff like that, and it was it was awesome because you're
literally just part of the darkness. And then when they finally get indicted, and we'll get into this, you know, I don't know if you watched Chapels Cork hearing, they literally were like they were watching us and hearing us the whole time for years, for years, because a lot of these cases we collect evidence for years to be
able to indict. So those are the first ones where you're just kind of you know, following around and really learning how to stay in the shadows and not get caught, how to stay three cars behind without losing them, stuff like that.
So when you buy yourself at the style, at the.
Start level, at the start, I was being trained, so there was like one or two other agents, yeah, training me, but most of the investigations are usually done by themselves back then. Now when we do surveillance, you know, you have the van and then of course you have the vantage point, but everything is done digitally, so you don't really need a van. Like you could be in an office with all your gadgets connected, so that that's just for the movies. The Little Van, Yeah, that's for the movies.
Were you nervous at the starts?
Yeah, I was very nervous. But I also knew that I had to pay my dues because to get to the level of interrogations that I got to, you had to pay your dues. Because everybody wants to be a profiler, everybody wants to be the mind reader type positions, but you have to pay your dues. And the way that you get to apply to those positions is by making your resume look nicer. So I'm a woman, I'm Latina, I'm doing undercover work that looks amazing on my resume.
So everybody usually has to do undercover work before they can start doing the higher level positions. And that's how they make it so competitive because not everybody gets those positions.
So when was it? When was the first time you actually got like, was there every a time when you thought this is not for me?
No?
Never, you didn't have any second You never had second thoughts.
No, But I think I think because my pain was so great and I felt like, you know how people join the military after, you know, Americans, a lot of Americans joined the military after nine to eleven. It's that feeling like I'm giving back and I'm giving back to my my murdered friend,