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Inspired by uncle, lone female graduate joins elite NYPD unit
The NYPD’s new crop of elite Emergency Service Officers graduated Friday with a lone female officer — and she says she was inspired to do the brave work by her ESU uncle, who regaled her as a kid with dramatic tales from the job.
“Watching him, I said, ‘Wow, that’s what I want to do,’ ” said Cristina Valdez-Guerrier, 31, who was one of 34 of the department’s ESU grads at the Floyd Bennett Field ceremony in Brooklyn.
“I’ve always wanted to do it, from the minute he went into the unit,” she said of ESU. “So every time I saw an E-man or an E-woman or a truck driving down the road … I said to myself, ‘One day, I’m going to get there.’ ”
There were only nine female officers in the elite unit as of April 2018, the last report available.
“It was a very intense training,” Valdez-Guerrier said.
Still, “There were other women who were in this unit before me that paved the way,” she said.
Valdez-Guerrier will now take the old number of her uncle, Carlos Valdez, 54, a deputy chief at Queens Borough North, who said he was “choked up” by the ceremony.
“The first stories of being on patrol myself piqued her interest to join the Police Department. Hearing the stories I came across when I was in ESU, that was ever more,” he said. “Since she was very young, she’s had an interest in following this type of work.
“It really hit me [today] when I pinned her shield —that’s my old shield number,” he said. “It choked me up.”
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