For 3 months, she ran a force of 13 police officers with 11 women on the force. Only the men on the force carried guns. The two previous Police Chiefs had been killed by drug cartels. While the town has about 60% unemployment, she was the only applicant for the position. That’s how dangerous working for the police is in the northern region of Mexico. She admitted to being afraid but took the job anyway. She said she was tired of the drug violence. There are reports that Marisol Valles Garcia left Mexico for the US on February 28 and is seeking asylum after receiving death threats from the drug cartels, possibly after refusing to work for one of the drug cartels.

Hermila Garcia Quinones was killed on November 29, 2010 by the drug cartels on her way to work as the Police Chief of Meoqui. This town is also in the northern region of Mexico. She had been sworn in on October 9, 2010. She took the job when there were no male candidates willing to apply for the position. If she was asked why she refused to travel with security, she would say, "If you don't owe anything, you don't fear anything."

Erika Gándara, 28, is still missing after being kidnapped from her home in December. She had joined the Valley of Júarez police force in June 2009 as a dispatcher. In her first month on the job an officer was killed. Over the next year, the rest of the police force resigned. By last summer, Gándara was the only member of the police force. She was appointed as chief after no one else wanted the job. No one has heard from her since she disappeared.

A total of 2,170 police officers - 540 of them women - are spread out over six districts in Ciudad Juarez, where more than 3,100 murders have been committed this year; that tally is higher than in 2009, when Ciudad Juarez, located across the border from El Paso, Texas, had 2,754 mostly drug-related murders, or 191 homicides per 100,000 residents.

Just a reminder that men don't hold a monopoly on bravery.

More information can be found at the links below.

http://www.blippitt.com/...

http://abclocal.go.com/...

http://www.elpasotimes.com/...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

http://abcnews.go.com/...

http://www.elpasotimes.com/...

http://latino.foxnews.com/...