Police: Heaven's Angel

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Darting about on her chrome-festooned motorcycle in her self-designed uniform—white crash helmet and boots, tight black pants and leather jacket—she might be taken for a Hell's Angel auxiliary. Up close, Esther Winders gives no such false impression. The badge on her breast, the pearl-handled pistol and the can of Chemical Mace that hang from her hips, clearly label Mrs. Winders what she is and always wanted to be: a lady cop.

In fact, Marshal Winders, daughter of a marshal and niece of a police chief, constitutes the entire police force of University Heights, Iowa. The tiny suburb (pop. 2,000) in the shadow of sedate Iowa State is honeycombed with law and order and can rely on nearby Iowa City police if more—or masculine —officers are needed. Mostly, they are not. Mrs. Winders has never discharged her pistol or Mace can in anger, although she did arrest a drunken driver two years ago.

Yet she is hardly idle. Patroling on her Harley-Davidson, or in the battered red Studebaker she prefers for late-night cruising, Mrs. Winders keeps University Heights safe from traffic offenders. "I still average one fine or so a week," she says. She also brings a feminine touch to police work. One couple in town had a spat during the night and headed out of their house in opposite directions; the marshal sat with their children until the parents returned the next morning. On the rare occasions when an escaped convict has been in the vicinity, Mrs. Winders and her bloodhound Portia join police from neighboring areas in the chase. Her most serious current problem is an ubiquitous peeping Tom. "They're the hardest to catch," she says. "But I'd like to put some buckshot into him."

Mayor Chan Coulter, a retired Army colonel, credits his one-woman force with providing a "very special kind of protection in our town." But soon University Heights, which hired Mrs. Winders in 1935 when she asked for the job, will have to start looking for a new marshal. Winders and Portia are contemplating retirement. "The council," says the grandmother, "thinks I'm getting loo old to chase cars." The council may have a point. At 70, Esther Winders claims to be the oldest working policewoman in the nation.