Nurturing, devoted and driven, Lois Marrero "had get-up-and-go,'' a fellow police officer says.
By KATHRYN WEXLER and AMY HERDY
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 7, 2001
TAMPA -- Lois Marrero was never one to duck a fight. It made her life difficult at times. It also made her a cop with the right stuff, colleagues said.
Marrero was fired in 1997. Police brass determined she had lied about attending a law enforcement seminar when she was really on vacation.
The spirited, petite Latina refused to go quietly.
She sued the Tampa Police Department, claiming the real reason they yanked her badge was that she had fired off a six-page letter of grievances -- to the chief of police, no less.
As a whistleblower, Marrero didn't want just money. She wanted her job back.
She got it. The department reinstated her, but stripped her of her rank as sergeant.
In the quasi-military culture of police work, bucking the system is left to the hardy few. Marrero was one of the fighters -- both inside the department and out. She hated injustice on the streets. And she didn't tolerate it within her organization either, officers said.
"She was a battler," said police spokesman Joe Durkin. "She had get-up-and-go."
In her private life, she was nurturing and devoted. Tampa Officer Mickie Mashburn was Marrero's companion the past 10 years. They were on the phone Friday morning, reveling in their plans to see a WNBA basketball game in Orlando later that night. Marrero had to hang up abruptly.
"I've got a (radio) call and I've got to get out there quick," Marrero said. It would be the last call Marrero would respond to. She ended the conversation the way she always did.
"She told me she loved me," said Mashburn, 48. "It has me in peace that way."
Marrero, 40, had 15 months left before retirement. She was training for another marathon. And though she was nearing the end of a rocky and often unhappy career, Mashburn said, she was as driven as ever.
Just two days ago, Marrero was investigating a report of a suspicious auto reposesser a block from where she would be shot, when she saw one dog attack another. She darted over.
"Get the dog collar or I'm going to handle the dog myself," she warned the owner, said Karen Breit, the person who had called about the repo man.
"She was very outgoing and bubbly. But you could tell she didn't take any c--- from anybody," Breit recalled. "She had no fear."
With 19 years on the police force, she had a firm handshake and a sharp mind. "Very good personality," Capt. Jane Castor said.
Marrero cultivated her tough, street-wise reputation. Her diminutive size -- she was 5-foot-1 -- never held her back. In fact, it was something she traded on.
"She would tell us stories about her stature and some of the drunks she had to deal with," said Scott Paine, a former City Council member. "They'd look down at her and snicker and say things like, "You going to make me, lady?' And then she would."
Said Officer Craig Harridge, "I don't think that Lois would back away from anything. She had a heart that was twice as big as her physical size."
In her early years, Marrero was a rising star. Supervisors wrote in evaluations in the 1980s that she was a "model officer."
She and another officer were recognized publicly in 1988 for doing what would prove to be the future of police work, community-oriented policing. Assigned to Ybor City, at the time a crime-ridden district, Marrero and her partner Dana Singer got the electric company to fix street lighting. They went after the city to condemn dilapidated buildings. Police officials praised them for making Ybor City safer.
"When she did her shift, the people of Tampa always got their money's worth," said Officer Josh Pinney, who worked with Marrero about five years ago in community affairs.
By the mid 1990s, she was head of the unit that fought gang activity.
But she was soon making waves of different kind. The letter she sent to the chief, dated June 25, 1997, was remarkably fiery for an underling.
Among a litany of complaints, Marrero was angry Holder didn't order a formal investigation of an officer for allegations of stealing uniforms from the department.
"Sir, once again there is No consistency here," Marrero wrote.
When she was fired three months later, police officials criticized her for conducting her own investigation of the Police Athletic League, an officer-staffed outreach program, instead of going through other channels.
Though reinstated, Marrero felt she had been wronged, not vindicated, Mashburn said.
Tampa Mayor Dick Greco showed up Friday at the hospital where Mashburn and family members were mourning. Mashburn told him he wasn't welcome. The mayor hadn't shown any support for Marrero during her travails, she said.
"She loved her job so much and it tainted it for her," Mashburn said.
Maj. Scott Cunningham said Friday that residents had been calling all day to say Marrero stopped frequently to talk. "One citizen called and said, "Lois was with me just yesterday.' "
The size of her commitment will be long remembered, he said. "Her memory will be a lot bigger than her stature."
- Staff writers Christopher Goffard, Graham Brink, Angela Moore, Babita Persaud and David Karp and researcher John Martin contributed to this report.
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