Christy, In Her Own Words

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Christy Sheppard: I'll tell you what keeps me up at night, the safety of the officers. You worry about there being an officer involved shooting where either they have to fire their weapon or someone shoots at them.

Narrator: Christy Sheppard knew the stress involved in being a police officer. But that didn't stop her from pursuing her dream.

Christy Sheppard: When I graduated from college, I worked at juvenile detention. I'd read the case reports and they'd talk about running down the suspect, arresting them. It's like reading a book. You want to know what the next chapter is going to bring. And I thought, I could totally do that. That sounds fun.

Narrator: Stressors are stimuli that cause stress to an individual. Christy found plenty of stressors in her work.

Christy Sheppard: On the street, you're definitely going to encounter stressful things. People are aggressive. That's stressful. That's stressful. I started to work undercover. You need to come to work with dirty hair and dirty jeans on and nobody cares.

I was buying dope one time and there was a male there. And I knew right away, he recognized me. So you have to figure out a way to get out of there. I bought the dope and I left, and that was a little bit scary.

Narrator: Each person responds differently to stress. Some people even thrive in stressful situations.

Christy Sheppard: I think that police officers, we like the adrenaline. And you always come back into the substation afterwards and talk about the exciting stuff you did, if you ran somebody down. That's exciting.

I went and I worked crimes against children. And that's good work, too, because there's nothing better than catching somebody that's harmed a baby.

Then I went to internal affairs. I like that work. I'm nosy and I like knowing what's going on.

Narrator: But chronic stress can affect people in unexpected ways.

Christy Sheppard: I had been a lieutenant for four months or so. And you're stressed and you're working midnights, and on midnights, you don't really get very much rest. And we also have a physical abilities test. I am the first lieutenant in the history of the department who's black. I'm female in a male dominated field. I certainly don't want to fail.

And the last thing I remember that day is that I closed my garage door and that's it. I don't remember anything else.

You take the whole test. I keep asking the same questions over and over again. And then, we're going to have to lunch. I call my husband and I say to him, I said, what's today's date? What day of the week is it?

Ron Sheppard: I thought she was messing around because she told me she was at a restaurant, but she didn't know how she got there. So I thought maybe she was having a stroke.

Christy Sheppard: So they take me to hospital and the ER doc thinks I'm having a stroke.

Ron Sheppard: They had to call a neurologist in. And probably within about 10 minutes, he diagnosed it as this transient global amnesia.

Christy Sheppard: I think that's kind of your body's way of protecting you and your brain, kind of like needs a rest.

Narrator: Christy passed her test. But her greatest crisis on the job still lay ahead.

Christy Sheppard: We recently had an incident here in Colorado Springs. It was very dynamic and tragic. Here are your friends on the radio and not knowing who was safe. It was very stressful.

If you did this job and everyday you were like boy, I hope today I don't die, you're going to burn out. You have to let it go. You have to compartmentalize all that stuff.

Narrator: Christy and Ron have found ways to deal with stress.

Ron Sheppard: We each have our own ways of dealing with stress. I usually just go work out.

Christy Sheppard: It sounds lame. I love to read. That is relaxing to me. I like to just get a book or magazine or anything else and read. We like to vacation. We like to vacation a lot. We just kind of hang out.

Narrator: Most people learn strategies for dealing with stress as they grow older.

Ron Sheppard: You know, we've been on the job for 25 years now. We know how to deal with stress. We've learned, definitely, to roll with things a lot better.

Christy Sheppard: I've enjoyed every single thing that I've done. I want to get into policing because I want to help people, sounds so lame, but it really is true.