LASD Sergeant Rosa Gonzalez wanted to be a cop ever since she was a kid.
“I grew up in a bad environment,” she said when we talked about her childhood ambitions.
“My dad was a heroin addict. My mom had to work two jobs to make ends meet. She worked in the strawberry fields and cleaned houses for a living,” said Gonzalez.
“Growing up in that environment I grew up with a lot of shame—like I was a second class citizen,” she said.
“So for me law enforcement represented the good in society. They represented justice.”
She resolved that she would become one of these badge-wearing icons.
Gonzalez graduated from high school in 1996, then got an associates degree from Cerritos college, and had the first of her two kids, a daughter.
Then in 1999, three years later, she got married, and took the first concrete steps toward following her childhood dreams.. She applied for the entry level job of custody assistant in the Los Angeles County jail system, which meant she was an employee of the LASD, but was not a sworn officer.
Still Gonzalez saw it as a meaningful step. At the jail, she worked the “morning shift,” which is basically an overnight shift in which she came on duty at 10 p.m. and finished at six in the morning.
After coming home from work, Gonzalez both cared for her kids, and attended classes at Long Beach State. By 2004, she had graduated with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.
Two years later, in 2006, Gonzalez finally got her dream job when she was sworn in as a...
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