Recruits have their uniforms checked by the color guard and their teachers regularly. Their shoes must be polished and the shirts and pants must be ironed and tucked correctly.

Photos by JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Tamara Keister, 46, is one of 10 students in the first class to graduate from the Roanoke County Criminal Justice Academy. As part of their training the students must be pepper sprayed in the face and then fight their way through several obstacles.

Above: Tamara Keister cleans her weapon for inspection. Each time the recruits fire their weapons they are required to clean them.

Left: Keister coughs as she works through a house filled with gas. Keister said the experience was only a warm-up for the pepper spray test, which she dreaded all the way through her training.

Above: Tamara Keister cleans her weapon for inspection. Each time the recruits fire their weapons they are required to clean them.

Left: Keister coughs as she works through a house filled with gas. Keister said the experience was only a warm-up for the pepper spray test, which she dreaded all the way through her training.

Brian Corcoran handcuffs Tamara Keister during practice for defensive tactics. Keister, 46, says that at her age, she has only the one chance to become a police officer.

Photos by JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Tamara Keister backs up Kirk Stickley during a felony stop practice at the Roanoke County Criminal Justice Academy. Keister has the highest physical fitness score of her class, her instructors say, but she freely admits she used up a quantity of Bengay and Epsom salts to do it.

Photos by JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Tamara Keister hugs her daughter Chandler after dinner. Keister says that her being part of the police academy has required her four children to take on more responsibilities. On a particularly stressful night Keister's youngest son, Chase (in background) wrote her a note saying, "Don't think about what you are doing, just know you are doing it right."

After being pepper sprayed in the face for part of a drill, Chris Boblett and Tamara Keister walk back to support their classmates.

Tamara Keister fixes dinner at home for three of her four children (from left), Chase, Katy and Chandler. More often than not, however, her children have had to help cook.

Tamara Keister, far right, fixes dinner at home for three of her four children, left to right, Chase, Katy and Chandler.

As part of academy training, students must be pepper sprayed in the face and then fight their way through several obstacles.

Tamara Keister backs up Kirk Stickley during a felony stop practice.

Photos by Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Women in the ranks

Roanoke County Police

• 130 officers
• 16 female officers
• 12 percent female officers
• Highest ranking woman: Donna Furrow, assistant chief of police

Roanoke Police

• 235 officers
• 20 female officers
• 8.5 percent female officers
• Highest ranking women: Two sergeants out of 32 sergeants

Video

• See video of Tamara Keister in training.

From her first day as a Roanoke County police academy recruit, Tamara Keister dreaded the pepper spray test.

"It's the worst pain you'll ever feel in your life," Sgt. Keith Smith said. "But there are no known deaths associated with it -- that's the upside."

Keister wasn't sure about that. She was so scared of being blinded by the fiery spray that even her children spoke in hushed tones about mom's so-called "Hell Day."

For weeks she found herself waking up in the middle of the night, running the worst-case scenarios through her head:

What if she died and left her children motherless?

What if she went blind and never got to see her grandchildren?

What if she found out that being a Cave Spring soccer mom in no way qualified her to become a Roanoke County cop?

Maybe her husband and parents were right when they said that, at 46, she was too old to hack the rigors of police work.

For 18 years, Keister had been a stay-at-home mom, the driver of an eight-passenger sport utility vehicle -- perfect for hauling her four school-age kids to all manner of after-school activities.

To trade the Suburban for a police cruiser, she would have to prove the worrywarts wrong. But to do that, first she would have to leave her own worries behind.

First she would have to get through Hell Day.

Risky business

Why? That's everyone's question.

Why would you trade the comforts of a five-bedroom, four-bathroom home for a muddy training field?

Keister -- that's how her nine fellow recruits address her, usually with an exclamation point at the end -- doesn't have a straight answer. It's always been her gut feeling that she was destined to become a cop.

She was a tomboy growing up on her parents' Wythe County farm, used to firing shotguns and playing in the dirt. She had wanted to major in criminal justice in college, but her father said no; the money wasn't good and, besides, that was men's work.

When her oldest was born in 1990, her plan had been to return to work. Her own mother had worked when she was a child, and Keister always imagined herself contributing financially to the marriage.

But when she looked into baby Katy's eyes, there was no way she was going back to work. Husband Martin, an insurance company manager, agreed.

"I loved staying at home," Keister said. "I cooked, cleaned, did all the yard work. It was my job, and it was a privilege."

When the youngest went to school, she floated the idea of joining the police force.

No way, Martin Keister said, shaking his head. Cautious by nature, the work was too grueling, he said, the risk too great.

She waited a few years before bringing it up again: "Katy's in high school and the little kids are bigger, and it's tick, tick, tick," she argued. "I can't wait till it's convenient for everybody to be grown and have kids of their own and I'm in a wheelchair."

She had a point.

He had reservations, but Martin Keister knew his wife would not let the idea go. With caveats, he gave his blessing.

Before long, she was arriving home bruised from defensive tactics training and so tired that many nights she skipped supper and went directly to bed.

"How was your day?" he asked tentatively.

"Fine. Hard. Tiring."

The details were better left unsaid.

A positive force

Before she joined the academy, Tamara Keister had never paid anyone to watch her kids. And now here she was writing her first check for after-school care for the youngest and asking her oldest, Katy, for help.

"Can you pick up Kyle after school? And Chase, too? And make sure you feed Chandler before dance -- and pick her up afterwards?"

It wouldn't hurt, Katy knew, if she just so happened to cook a pot of spaghetti before her mom came home from work.

In the old days, the kids would come home from school to the smell of lasagna wafting in the air.

In the old days, Keister wouldn't have dreamed of missing Senior Night at Cave Spring High. Cheerleader Katy was supposed to be escorted across the football field with both of her parents at her side.

Make that parent. The recruits were assigned to do a last-minute physical training exercise that night, so Keister arrived late.

"You need to go home, honey, look at you," Martin said.

Her hair was a mess, and she was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open. Martin escorted Katy alone.

"I was disappointed, because you're only a senior one time," Katy recalled recently. "But I'm really proud of her, too.

"I don't know any other moms who are out there making that career choice."

Guilt rabbit

Her mother-in-law helped ferry the children. And even Keister's retiree parents, who initially resisted her notion of becoming a cop, spent Wednesdays doing the family's laundry and preparing meals.

But life has forever changed. Keister had to cut back some of her favorite holiday traditions, forgoing her usual cookie baking. And the rabbit she gave the kids for Christmas quickly became known, only half-jokingly, as "the guilt rabbit."

"They went from me doing everything for them to me doing almost nothing," she said. "They've had to learn I am not a machine."

But Keister knows she's a good role model, especially for her daughters. She knows, too, that she's "fulfilling God's plan" for her to be a positive force in people's lives.

Not long ago, she was shadowing an officer when a drug call came in over the scanner. Keister found herself comforting a crying girl while the child's stepmother was searched for drugs in the next room.

"I said, 'My little girl has shoes just like those.' After a minute or two, she finally stopped crying, looked up at me and said, 'What color?' "

Lint is huge

At work, it didn't seem to matter that she was twice as old as most of her cohorts. Or that they were all men.

They viewed slides of sexually abused kids and learned how to examine the signs. They practiced riot control and "arm bars," a defensive move used to disarm a suspect.

They learned to leave a fingerprint on every vehicle they stop -- so if something happens to them, they'll have left evidence of their mark.

They arrived promptly for their 7:45 a.m. lineup, their uniforms perfectly pressed, the crease on their shirt sleeves splitting the word "RECRUIT" in the precise center of the shoulder patch.

They picked tiny pieces of lint off one another's uniforms, lest an errant hair or piece of fuzz cause a sergeant to order the entire recruit group to "GET DOWN AND GIVE ME 20!"

During workouts, she sucked it up when a sergeant screamed at her:

"KEISTER, ARE YOU AFRAID OF IT?!"

"No, sir," she said, dropping to the mud.

She couldn't say what she was thinking: "For 18 years, I've been the one giving orders."

And: "I'm older than some of my training officers!"

And: "Is Martin right? Am I really too old to survive this?"

Hell Day hype

At 5 feet 7 inches and 131 pounds, Keister may be statuesque, but she can now do 47 sit-ups in one minute and run a mile and a half in 11.

"She's smoking guys who are 20 years younger than she is," said Lt. Jimmy Chapman, director of the new Roanoke County Criminal Justice Academy.

Though it took Bengay and Epsom salts to get her through it, she ended up with the highest physical fitness score in the class, which this week will become the first to graduate from the academy.

"It's not like she's their mom, but she's got this level of maturity that has really helped bond them as a group," Chapman said.

For instance: Keister was always the one to quell the tough-guy talk with a gentle reminder that, no matter what a person has done, he is still someone's child.

"She grounds us," added Chris Boblett, a fellow recruit. "But if push came to shove, I would not have a single worry about going into [a dangerous situation] with Keister; she's totally on top of her game."

Still, the week of Hell Day, even Boblett conceded: "She's more freaked about this than any of us."

Recruit Brian Corcoran lent her his St. Michael medallion, which had helped get him through Army boot camp years ago. Knowing of Keister's asthma, he brought along an extra inhaler for her to borrow, too.

Recruit Shannon Deshotel called her early on Hell Day with a message from his girlfriend, a federal law enforcement officer. "Whatever you do, don't wear makeup," he said.

"It'll just smear and make it hurt even worse."

Gagging for air

Keister hadn't eaten a full meal in two days. She nibbled at a granola bar between exercises, including one test in which she had to enter a house that had been sprayed with chemical gas -- a warm-up for the pepper spray.

"How bad is this afternoon in comparison?" Keister asked, as she stumbled out coughing, snot running from her nose.

"Only about 100 times worse," Officer Corey Newman said.

He wasn't exaggerating. The spray, a derivative of hot cayenne peppers, causes temporary blindness and inflammation of the breathing tube tissues. Ask any officer: When you get hit with it, nothing hurts worse.

Keister was so afraid that there was no doubt among the recruits about who was going first -- she wanted desperately to get it over with.

Her buddies cheered her on as a sergeant squirted the spray directly into one of her eyes and across her forehead. Half-blinded, she had to complete an obstacle course laid out for the recruits -- forcing her eye open with her hand. Ten punches to a training bag, then 10 kicks, then 10 hits with a police baton.

If she went too easy at the target, Smith was there to remind her: "I WANNA SEE YOU GET PISSED!"

At the end of the gantlet, Keister had to disarm another sergeant and cuff him. For the next 15 minutes, she poured cold water from a hose into her eye.

Then, they made her do it all over again, saying she needed to hit the training bags more forcefully before they could pass her. Which finally, thankfully, they did.

"It's like labor," Keister said. "It comes and goes, comes and goes. And just when you think you're almost there, you're not."

Arm in arm

When she arrived home, her 10-year-old greeted her at the door. "Look! One of her eyes shrinked and the other one grew!" Chandler said. The other kids cheered.

Daughter Katy was thrilled that night when her mom showed up for the basketball team's turn at Senior Night.

The gym was crowded and hot, and the sweat momentarily reactivated the pepper spray in Keister's eye.

She and her husband flanked their daughter, and arm in arm they escorted her across the gym. Katy beamed.

Keister knew there were other tests standing between her and her March 14 graduation, but at that moment she knew:

Soon, she would be a cop. She would always be a good mother.