Birth name - Maritza Rodriguez
Birth date - April 20th, 1975
Birth place - Chicago Illinois

Rank- Sargeant
Experience - 12 years in Chicago PD and 3 years in The City PD

Graduated Highschool June 1991
Entered the Chicago Police Academy to train as a police officer in the fall of 1991 -
Graduated from the academy in the spring of 1993

In the late fall of 1993, at the age of 18 she started out as a rookie cop at Chicago PD. Learned the ropes from some of the best and worked the Barrios where she'd grown up as her main beat for the first 10 - 12 years of her career.

Received accommendations while at Chicago PD for her work in getting kids with basically no future off the streets, out of the drug infested barrios and into better lives.

Transferred to The City's Eighth Precinct in April of 2005.
Worked the Redlight district and the Dock area as well as the Hood with Marty Slade, the partner she'd been assigned to as a newcomer.

In the past three years she's worked most every street in the city as well as venturing into the Hills and Cove Lake area when needed.

Accommendations for bravery under duress, and for her help in cracking the serial killer case of the man who called himself "The Gardener", she was almost killed herself, but if not for her training she might not have lived long enough to be rescued.

She's taken a bullet a couple of times, most recently during the shootout with the members of the street gang known as the Vatos, where the quick action of herself and her partner that day saved the lives of many innocent people.

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Maritza Rodriguez was born in Chicago.. She soon learned how to be tough. She had no choice growing up in the Barrios. Fight for what you believed in, that was just the way it was. But Maritza didn’t want to live the life her parents had been subjected to all their lives, lack of the education and money, they couldn’t find a way out. But she was bound and determined and fought her way out of the Barrios. She worked at whatever parttime jobs she could find as she made her way through school. Straight from highschool into the police academy and at the ripe age of 18 she was out on the street as a patrol cop. Her first years spent in the same neighborhood she’d grown up in, working to get the kids out of the barrios, away from the poverty and the drugs. Doing all she could to help them find the better life she’d found. A few success stories came out of her efforts and a few tales of failures. But she knew that even the handful of success stories made a difference in some young peoples lives.

In April of 2005 she got a call to the Chief’s office at the Chicago PD where she was stationed. It seemed that a precinct in a city a few hundred miles away was shorthanded, needed some good officers and she was being transferred. A week or so later, April 12th to be exact, she landed in The City and reported in at the Eighth precinct with her credentials in hand. Assigned to duty with her partner, Officer Marty Slade, she soon learned her way around.

Nearly three years later and she has some stories to tell. Most of them were pretty much everyday life for a cop on the beat. Others, well, they were a little more intense. Danger lurked in the darkness even for the cops of the city. She’d been kidnapped by a serial killer who called himself The Gardener. Held in his cellar for days before she was rescued in the nick of time when she was almost killed by the lunatic. And then there was the surprise drug bust where she was shot in the shoulder and it turned deadly not just for the gang members but a for a fellow officer as well.

Life wasn’t so simple for this cop who’d found herself in the City.

More to come----