Speaker 1: Appochet production. So I mean they would be in class
Speaker 1: and there would be shootings and we would just go
Speaker 1: under the table. But the problem was that there were
Speaker 1: so much gang activity in Cicero. There was so much
Speaker 1: gang activity. You know. Obviously Chicago is infamous for gangs
Speaker 1: like other big cities, but the Mexican or Hispanic gangs
Speaker 1: were huge in Cicero. They still are. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, they would be fighting back and forth with
Speaker 1: each other, and that's usually what the cause of the
Speaker 1: violence was, is gang activity, gang violence.
Speaker 2: What would have happened if your friend was a relative
Speaker 2: of a rival gang and they didn't know and they've killed,
Speaker 2: what would have happened?
Speaker 1: Then, Oh god, there would be a lot of other
Speaker 1: heads rolling around for sure, because you know how it is.
Speaker 1: It's gang violence, just like cartel violence. They don't there's
Speaker 1: no mercy. You know. I've worked at the border and
Speaker 1: seen firsthand the cartel violence, and it's some of the
Speaker 1: stuff I would never wish anybody to see. The things
Speaker 1: that I've seen, you know, and I'm talking about bodies
Speaker 1: that have been fully skinned and are tied to trees,
Speaker 1: or you know, dismembered bodies or bodies hanging off of
Speaker 1: bridges like lynchings. It's crazy.
Speaker 2: So while you're in school and you're leaving school, you'd
Speaker 2: already picked what kind of a job you wanted to
Speaker 2: do after this.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I picked my job based on my pain.
Speaker 1: And I share this internationally every time I get on
Speaker 1: a stage. I share this with people. Is most people
Speaker 1: that join the government or join FBID you know CIA,
Speaker 1: they do it because of some type of trauma. We
Speaker 1: didn't just watch a movie one day and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to go save the world. We do it
Speaker 1: because we have a deeper connection to the job, because
Speaker 1: this is a type of job that some of us
Speaker 1: don't survive. And it's not luxurious, and it's not it's
Speaker 1: it's exciting, but it's very dangerous. And I don't think people,
Speaker 1: you know, the media and the movies make it seem
Speaker 1: like it's very logist.
Speaker 2: It's no, we are not.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you. We are not riding around in
Speaker 1: lambos and going to lavish parties like Double the Seven.
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 1: We are literally in the slums in the ship trying
Speaker 1: to fit in to our surroundings. By no means that
Speaker 1: I ever drive no lambo and have beautiful hair and
Speaker 1: I was just flying out the side. No, it was
Speaker 1: never like that. I had guns to my head, I
Speaker 1: had hands on my throat, you know, punches to my
Speaker 1: face like this.
Speaker 2: No, so what what did you actually join the department?
Speaker 1: So I graduated college in four, I went in in
Speaker 1: O six, So I started doing undercover work in six.
Speaker 1: I did undercover work from six to eight, and then
Speaker 1: in eight I was transferred to Houston to start doing
Speaker 1: more of the interrogations. So I have to say this
Speaker 1: because I feel like me getting transferred to Houston to
Speaker 1: do interrogations on criminals, drug dealers, murders, traffickers. You know,
Speaker 1: all of that saved my life literally, because I don't
Speaker 1: think I would have survived much longer doing undercover work
Speaker 1: with the technology that we started seeing. Because keep in mind,
Speaker 1: when I was doing undercover work, the first iPhone had
Speaker 1: just came out, and so we were doing old school
Speaker 1: undercover work where we're in the bushes hiding. Nowadays, I
Speaker 1: can sit here and track you all the way in
Speaker 1: Australia and you know, hack into your phone and I
Speaker 1: know exactly where you're at, what time you're sleeping, what
Speaker 1: time your alarm was off, what time you're leaving your house,
Speaker 1: what time you turn on your car, because now everything
Speaker 1: is digital and we can hack into everything. So it
Speaker 1: really is a gift for me to be able to
Speaker 1: speak on how it is to do old school when
Speaker 1: you're in the van holding the camera and driving the
Speaker 1: car at the same time, Like, we don't have to
Speaker 1: do that anymore.
Speaker 2: While you were doing that, did you ever get like,
Speaker 2: did you ever get SOT out or on the cod Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So my cover was blown. I was in upstate
Speaker 1: New York by myself, okay, and this was probably more
Speaker 1: undercover than not, because I did was undercover, and I
Speaker 1: went into a cartel member's wife's business and I was
Speaker 1: getting my hair done by the wife. And you know,
Speaker 1: back then, the tech, like I said, the technology wasn't
Speaker 1: as good as now. So I had a purse that
Speaker 1: we had cut a hole in the purse, and we
Speaker 1: had a camera inside the purse, so I see situated
Speaker 1: the purse so that whenever she was doing my hair,
Speaker 1: you could see the activity that was happening in the back.
Speaker 1: So at the same time that I went to go
Speaker 1: get my hair dyed by the wife, they were bringing
Speaker 1: in cocaine from the back and they were putting it
Speaker 1: in bottles of you know, shampoo, and so the camera
Speaker 1: was catching this activity. Well she was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the weather in New York, you know, blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and you could see the activity. She had no idea,
Speaker 1: but that's how we found out that there was this
Speaker 1: activity happening. So I had to go in there and
Speaker 1: act as a client and say, oh, yeah, I'm here
Speaker 1: from out of town. I have to you dye my
Speaker 1: hair black. So yeah, wow, what was I was? I
Speaker 1: was caught, you know. I and I say this in
Speaker 1: the book For those that don't know, I have a
Speaker 1: book out. It's called Through These Brown Eyes. I speak.
Speaker 1: I speak very lightly on this stuff because we're gonna
Speaker 1: let the movie speak more of it. But I was
Speaker 1: caught and they so I was in upstate New York
Speaker 1: and you know, it's very mountainous and it was in
Speaker 1: the middle of winter. They tried to crash my van
Speaker 1: so that it would go over the side of the mountain.
Speaker 1: So that in the movies is true. They do do that.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Well instead of doing that, I was like, look,
Speaker 1: you kind of start thinking about what your chances are
Speaker 1: of survival. So I was like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: plumb it to my death. That's that's not my first choice.
Speaker 1: So I stopped and I surrendered. Now at the time,
Speaker 1: I'm forty one now, but at the time I was
Speaker 1: twenty three, so I look very young. So my twenty
Speaker 1: three was probably looking like sixteen. And I think that
Speaker 1: that actually saved me, because they could have killed me.
Speaker 1: They could have killed me, but they didn't. They also
Speaker 1: did not take any of my limbs, and they didn't
Speaker 1: disfigure me. Usually when you are caught, they cut your
Speaker 1: limbs off or they disfigure you, because it's almost like
Speaker 1: this is your parting gift. Thank you. Now you're disfigured
Speaker 1: or you're missing some limbs. And I think they felt
Speaker 1: bad for me. I mean, they still beat me, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't to the point where I'm disfigured. And obviously
Speaker 1: I went through the trauma. But I always say this story,
Speaker 1: and I said this on another stage that I got
Speaker 1: on and I hit up Verizon. But when I was taken,
Speaker 1: I had two phones. I had my personal phone and
Speaker 1: my government phone. My personal phone was t Mobile. That shit.
Speaker 1: They grabbed it and they threw it, but I grabbed
Speaker 1: my Verizon phone, and I stuck it in my bra
Speaker 1: so because I knew that as soon as the van
Speaker 1: would start moving, they would know my location because of
Speaker 1: the tower. Back then, your phones would ping off of
Speaker 1: towers to get your location. That's old school technology. So
Speaker 1: that's the only way that I was found because of Verizon.
Speaker 1: So I always tell Verizon, and I still to this
Speaker 1: day have Verizon because of that, and I will not
Speaker 1: get any other phone service because Verizon saved my life.
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: How was your How was your cover blown?
Speaker 1: So my cover was blown because I was following them
Speaker 1: and they saw me following them. Here's the thing about
Speaker 1: doing surveillance is that when you're in upstate New York
Speaker 1: and you're the only two cars out there, it's it's
Speaker 1: gonna be very difficult. Now if if I would have
Speaker 1: done that same that same undercover work, now things would
Speaker 1: have been different. I could have been sitting in a
Speaker 1: cabin in the top of the mountain. They would have
Speaker 1: never known because of the technology. But back then, if
Speaker 1: you're following somebody and you're in a rural area upstate
Speaker 1: New York, it's literally them in the car, so they're like,
Speaker 1: who the fuck is following them. Yeah, so to my defense,
Speaker 1: I was it almost was like it was inevitable, it
Speaker 1: was going to happen.
Speaker 2: So do you think do you think also what said
Speaker 2: because you were you buy yourself, you said.
Speaker 1: By myself a lot of a lot of these smaller
Speaker 1: missions we did on our own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you think that saved your life too? Because
Speaker 2: if you the being of a for sure?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they would have killed us both and threw
Speaker 1: us over the mountain for sure. Oh yeah. The power
Speaker 1: of a woman to a man is, you know, it's
Speaker 1: effortless because we and I think I always talk about
Speaker 1: this as well, is when I go into an interrogation room,
Speaker 1: I don't look like an interrogator. They think I'm a psychologist,
Speaker 1: but I am the interrogator. But my tactics and the
Speaker 1: way that I finesse them is totally different. I get
Speaker 1: them so comfortable that they think I am the therapist
Speaker 1: that they start talking about their childhood, and then I
Speaker 1: literally ignite the child in them and they start crying,
Speaker 1: and then they just start divulging information. A man can't
Speaker 1: do that, and so I think that's why I became
Speaker 1: very successful as an interrogat because I was able to
Speaker 1: tap into the child of the perpetrator. So men can't
Speaker 1: do that. You know. Men come in and they're like,
Speaker 1: tell me this motherfucker and then they just they shut down.
Speaker 1: But a woman's power is totally different.
Speaker 2: So, wow, what was it? So we'll just go back.
Speaker 2: I just want to know about your first assignments and
Speaker 2: what it felt like to get your first assignments.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, My first assignments were very The first
Speaker 1: ones were easy. The first ones were just surveillance. So surveillance,
Speaker 1: you know, you just follow people and for those that
Speaker 1: don't know. Whenever you're working on these huge cartel or
Speaker 1: even corporate fraud cases, a lot of evidence is needed
Speaker 1: and we're talking years of evidence, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of it is digital evidence, phone conversations. We need to
Speaker 1: have incriminating information that is videotaped and audio recorded. So
Speaker 1: a lot of my first stuff was just me following
Speaker 1: you around. I would follow you around for days, like
Speaker 1: four or five days, and you never knew. I was
Speaker 1: like in the bushes in your yard with the camera
Speaker 1: through your windows, like listening to all your calls, conversations,
Speaker 1: following you around to see your patterns, what time you
Speaker 1: get up what time you leave, what time, what time
Speaker 1: you're meeting up, what time the runs are happening, stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and it was it was awesome because you're
Speaker 1: literally just part of the darkness. And then when they
Speaker 1: finally get indicted, and we'll get into this, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you watched Chapels Cork hearing, they
Speaker 1: literally were like they were watching us and hearing us
Speaker 1: the whole time for years, for years, because a lot
Speaker 1: of these cases we collect evidence for years to be
Speaker 1: able to indict. So those are the first ones where
Speaker 1: you're just kind of you know, following around and really
Speaker 1: learning how to stay in the shadows and not get caught,
Speaker 1: how to stay three cars behind without losing them, stuff
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: So when you buy yourself at the style, at the.
Speaker 1: Start level, at the start, I was being trained, so
Speaker 1: there was like one or two other agents, yeah, training me,
Speaker 1: but most of the investigations are usually done by themselves
Speaker 1: back then. Now when we do surveillance, you know, you
Speaker 1: have the van and then of course you have the
Speaker 1: vantage point, but everything is done digitally, so you don't
Speaker 1: really need a van. Like you could be in an
Speaker 1: office with all your gadgets connected, so that that's just
Speaker 1: for the movies. The Little Van, Yeah, that's for the movies.
Speaker 2: Were you nervous at the starts?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was very nervous. But I also knew that
Speaker 1: I had to pay my dues because to get to
Speaker 1: the level of interrogations that I got to, you had
Speaker 1: to pay your dues. Because everybody wants to be a profiler,
Speaker 1: everybody wants to be the mind reader type positions, but
Speaker 1: you have to pay your dues. And the way that
Speaker 1: you get to apply to those positions is by making
Speaker 1: your resume look nicer. So I'm a woman, I'm Latina,
Speaker 1: I'm doing undercover work that looks amazing on my resume.
Speaker 1: So everybody usually has to do undercover work before they
Speaker 1: can start doing the higher level positions. And that's how
Speaker 1: they make it so competitive because not everybody gets those positions.
Speaker 2: So when was it? When was the first time you
Speaker 2: actually got like, was there every a time when you
Speaker 2: thought this is not for me?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Never, you didn't have any second You never had second thoughts.
Speaker 1: No, But I think I think because my pain was
Speaker 1: so great and I felt like, you know how people
Speaker 1: join the military after, you know, Americans, a lot of
Speaker 1: Americans joined the military after nine to eleven. It's that
Speaker 1: feeling like I'm giving back and I'm giving back to
Speaker 1: my my murdered friend,