by Kristin D’Agostino –
Asheville Police Department detective Sonia Escobedo, 48, learned the importance of family support early in life.
The daughter of migrant farm workers, her Mexican parents spent six months of the year in California and six months in Mexico in El Salitre Zacatecas, a rural area where Escobedo’s grandparents owned a farm. As a child, Sonia spent three years, from third to sixth grade, living with her grandparents and seeing them plant vegetables, milk cows, and make cheese that they sold at the market in the city.
“I loved it,” Escobedo said. “It was carefree there. You had to help out with chores and animals, but school was unstructured. In summertime, I’d help Grandpa with the plow and horse, drop a seed of corn, a seed of squash.”
When she was in junior high, her parents decided to move the family to Los Angeles, where Escobedo grew up near Chinatown in a neighborhood affected by gang violence. When she was 13, her uncle, who lived nearby, was murdered—and the police never solved the crime. This event deeply affected her family and ultimately drove Escobedo toward joining the police force.
“Law enforcement never took the time to dedicate to solve his investigation,” she said. “It has crossed my mind since that since (immigrants) don’t have the ability to communicate, they fall short. They don’t get the same amount of attention.”
As a child and teenager, Escobedo was a caretaker drawn to helping those in need. Seeing this, her father and grandmother urged her to study law enforcement. She began working nights at the Asheville Police Department when she was 21 and completed Basic Law Enforcement Training (BLET) at A-B Tech.
Since 2013, she’s worked as a detective focused on drug and gun investigations. She’s also a team leader in crisis negotiation, where she’s…
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