Cathy Lanier's early life plays like a season of MTV's "Teen Mom."
Skipping school at 13. Pregnant at 14. Married at 15. Separated at 17, on food stamps and back with her mother on a working-class block by a railroad in suburban Maryland; her mother had also relied on welfare and donated food to feed Cathy and her brothers after her husband split when Lanier was a toddler.
"I didn't even know how to write a check much less pay the bills," said the attractive and nearly 6-foot-tall blonde, now 46.
Her mother and grandmother cared for the baby while Lanier sold awnings and hair products, worked as a waitress at a barbecue joint at night and a secretary for a real estate developer by day.
Eventually, Lanier traded the typewriter for a gun. She joined the D.C. police force at 23, attracted by a program that offered to cover her tuition to go to college by day while she worked the late shift as a beat officer; she went on to get two master's degrees.
Now, remarkably, she is the very popular police chief of the nation's capital, a white woman in charge of law enforcement in a city with a black majority; a watchdog for a city — with its monuments, mandarins and diplomats — that is a maze of different security forces and a target for terrorists, hackers and retaliatory strikes.
As tensions over aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics shake up the New York mayor's race, Lanier has reviewed the D.C. version. Over the years, she has shifted her force from mirroring New York's "zero tolerance" theory that ignoring minor offenses leads to major ones.
She's tough on crime — she shared an award for most arrests soon after becoming a cop — but also wanted her officers to be compassionate, to interact with D.C. residents, develop sources, use new media to connect with the community, consider arrest a failure. She issued a directive on how to talk to transgender people, ignoring those who complained she was too touchy-feely. She started an anonymous text tip line and got in-car computers and BlackBerrys for officers.
She made it clear, she told Governing magazine, that she expected officers to "give their cellphone number to the old lady sitting on her porch drinking her beer at 9 o'clock in the morning instead of making her dump her beer."
She says she tells graduates of the police academy: "Look, this uniform does not automatically give you respect. People will either view that uniform as a symbol of hope and honesty or they will view it with fear."
As Lanier travels around gritty neighborhoods in D.C., swaths invisible to many of the high and mighty here, residents call out to greet her.
Once, as a sergeant, Lanier waved at an elderly African-American woman sitting on her porch "and she flips me the bird, and I'm like 'What?' I was shocked, but people really didn't think a whole lot of the police back then and that was during the height of violence in the city."
She says that, personally, "in 24 years here, I've never had an issue with race — ever. I think people in general don't really care what your race or gender is if they feel like you are legitimate."
Last year, D.C. had the lowest number of homicides on record since 1961; juvenile victims of homicides decreased by 85 percent in the last four years, according to the chief's office. She presides over about 4,000 officers and 450 civilians.
Lanier has never shot a person, just a rampaging pit bull. She says she "can take a punch," and did so once from someone she was busting for drugs. She affectionately recalls being taught how to by her two older brothers, who she says were "bullies" and "still are." One is a Maryland police officer, the other a retired firefighter, like her dad.
"I think that the physical demands of firefighting are much greater than the physical demands of policing," she said. "A lot of police work does not require brute strength. In fact, I'd say, really good communications skills are probably every bit, if not more, important as brute strength."
The Washington Post's Allison Klein checked out the chief's closet in her townhouse and found 30 police uniforms.
"That can be an issue sometimes," the single Lanier told me, grimacing, "when I want to go out and I don't have anything to wear."
Where does she wear her gun when she gets dressed up for a dinner date with her boyfriend?
"I find ways," she says, smiling mischievously.