Airborne Ambition
Thin Blue Line: Beyond the Badge
By Sarah McClure
The fact that a woman had never done it before did not discourage 23-year-old Teresa Lincoln, whose attention was suddenly gripped by the radio broadcast in 1983. It wasn’t the first time she would think to challenge prevailing standards. It was however, the first time she heard that recruitment commercial and decided to be an LAPD pilot.
She recalled as a young girl having a recurring dream about flying low over the map of the Earth. To this, she added the vision of wearing the blue uniform and flying as a helicopter pilot. Seven years later, Lincoln would step up as one of the first female Command Pilot, Certified Flight Instructors (CFI) with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Air Support Division, the second largest non-military air force in the world. Resolute to her ambition, Lincoln’s rise to a seemingly unattainable career, one that takes her from office girl to lady commander of the skies, offers nothing short of an inspiring biography.
Lincoln’s life had largely been shaped by doing the alternative. In junior high in the 1970s, a teacher told the girls in her class they wouldn’t need to pay attention to a lesson on engines, since “they weren’t going to understand anyway.” Unwilling to accept limitations given by others, she took auto mechanics as an elective. Years later, her first job would be working at a gas station, doing full service in motors. She would also join her Roland Heights High School football team as the only girl to play wide receiver. Once, she retreated to Colorado Springs by driving herself on her Suzuki GS850 motorcycle. In 1983, having spent two years working as a secretary for an electronics company – an occupation she describes as, “not normal enough for me” – the San Gabriel Valley native realized, at the end of hearing that commercial, she had stepped into a life not meant for her. “I heard somebody say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we all did in life what we wanted to do, as opposed to falling into our jobs?’” Lincoln says.
“I’ve always been unconventional and a feminine tomboy,” says Lincoln, focusing her fierce blue eyes. “Anytime somebody said to me, ‘girls can’t do that,’ I would go learn it.” When realizing she didn’t understand investments, she obtained a stock broker license. After seeing women typecast as owning small dogs, she in protest adopted four big dogs, including a Pit Bull, Rottweiler and Doberman pinscher. “I was a secretary and doing the whole pantyhose thing,” she says with a laugh, recalling her disadvantage as a secretary while researching for a pilot position with the largest law enforcement agency in the world. She discovered that a woman had never been selected for the program. “There just weren’t women that did this kind of thing back then,” she adds. Lincoln, who lacked the connections and professional experience in both police work and aviation, could have immediately felt discouraged. Instead, she saw an opportunity and felt empowered by the idea of becoming an LAPD pilot and making a difference in the lives of others. “Most people look at a situation like that and think, that’s impossible,” Lincoln says. “I think what makes the difference is that I focused on the goal at the end.” She even visualized herself as a pilot by pasting a photograph of her head into a photograph of a helicopter. To avoid feeling overwhelmed by the amount of training involved, it also helped her to break down all the steps.
On January 30, 1984, she made her first step in joining the Academy. She graduated six months later in July, and then worked patrol from 1985 to 1988 at Southwest Division, until transferring to South Traffic Division where she spent another year. During her five years in patrol, Lincoln studied aviation at Mt. San Antonio College and Brackett Field Airport, earning her commercial rating in 1989. Then she got word that a position with Air Support had opened up and she applied. “For a long time, all the spots were filled and somebody had to either retire or die for anything to open up,” she says. But within that same year, she found herself as one of Air Support’s first female Tactical Flight Officers (TFO), talking a hundred miles an hour to ground control and holding onto the inside of a hydraulically boosted helicopter that flew upwards of 1,000 feet and at speeds of 180 mph. She watched veteran pilots with decades of airborne experience steer quick, left-hand orbits and maneuver the silver-blue aircraft seamlessly like ballet in the air. In the beginning, when she was making those mistakes that only first-timers make, she says the experience could be intimidating and make her feel like she was falling all over herself. Although amazed at the opportunity, it was still strange as a female entering the program because it made her a minority. “It seemed like I was getting myself into something very manly,” she admits. When a woman is in a minority position, people tend to pay attention to everything she does, like when she makes mistakes, according to Lincoln. As a result, she practiced and learned everything she could from the pilots, down to memorizing the official dispersal order in both English and Spanish. Lincoln also believed in backing up her commercial rating with knowledge, even learning how to fix the aircraft’s engine. She remembers thrilling times like when she called commands over the air frequencies: She’d call, “Air Three’s overhead,” and startle air control with her female voice. “When you first walk in the room, you feel weird, and very shortly after, all judgments are based on work ethic and professionalism,” she says. “I have found that slugs are slugs and that people who work hard and take their job seriously – you forget whether they are black, white or female.” ASD Captain III Michael Williams, who met Lincoln after joining Air Support in 1993 as a sergeant, calls her exceptional. Last October, he joined Lincoln at the 14th Annual Police and Firefighters Appreciation night, where she was honored alongside nine other peace officers for service to the community. “She’s a self-starter,” Williams says. “When there was an opportunity for her to develop herself, we would help her.”
Lincoln’s big opportunity came in August 1990, when she applied and was chosen to start the command pilot training program. She graduated in January 1991, receiving her command pilot wings from then-ASD Captain Robert Woods. Today, of the 77 sworn employees in the division, there are five women, including three – Angela Krieg, Michelle Blackstone and Debra K. Dickerson – who’ve earned their wings. Nonetheless, it would be 17 years after Lincoln entered the program before another woman entered command pilot training. (This was Dickerson, who started the program in September 2006). Over the next 14 years while in ASD, Lincoln clocked 7,000 hours and flew a Bell 206B3, Bell OH-58A, Bell 407, AS 350 B1 and AS 350 B2.
Recently retired after serving 25 years as a Sky Knight Pilot with the Sheriff’s Department, Monica McIntyre is noted as the nation’s first female law enforcement pilot, logging in more than 15,800 hours. She befriended Lincoln in 1992, when both were speakers at an event for professional women, and calls Lincoln remarkable for placing in LAPD’s pilot program. “She went where many women had not gone before,” McIntyre says. “It’s a male-dominated field and she got beyond those gender barriers.” A December 2006 Federal Aviation Administration report estimates there were 597,109 active licensed pilots in the free world; of these women made up just 6 percent (36,101). In the early 1980s when Lincoln and McIntyre started airborne law enforcement, women made up fewer than 1,000 helicopter pilots and were considered unconventional, according to McIntyre. “One of the things I share with her is that you love it so much, you don’t notice the barriers,” McIntyre says of Lincoln’s success. In 2005, both were featured in Aviation for Women, the official publication of women in aviation – a feat shared with female hard hitters such as first female pilot and first female commander of a space shuttle, former NASA astronaut Eileen Marie Collins.
In 1992, Lincoln made Department history when she became the first female command flight instructor, a two-year post she sought out of a desire to share her knowledge and promote ASD. She calls her feeling of being enthused about Air Support a “2600 attitude.” She thoroughly enjoyed being an instructor and was considered to connect positively with everyone. She trained only male students, not having the opportunity to teach women at that point. She remembers teaching her students how user-friendly a helicopter is. Most people, she says, think pilots need to be burly men to rock a helicopter around, but the aircraft actually appreciates a light touch. Other times, she worked actively in recruitment, encouraging everyone to apply.
Today, as she prepares for retirement, she looks back at a 23-year career in LAPD with gratitude for the opportunities that it offered her and with more encouragement than before that others – in whatever circumstances – can find their paths. Whether it’s being an LAPD officer, a pilot or some other profession, it’s seeing the end goal through the challenges that brings them to their opportunity. “It’s not about being a woman,” she says. “It’s about who you are and what you do.”