The latest Netflix miniseries to take the world by storm tells the story of Griselda Blanco, also known as the "Cocaine Godmother" and "Black Widow". The series is based on true events, broadly following the journey of how Griselda became one of the most notorious Columbian drug lords in history.
It's an utterly gripping story, and so it's hardly surprising people across the globe want to know more – where are Griselda's children now, what happened to her three (?!) husbands, and just how did actress Sofia Vergara transform into Griselda?
The more that comes to light about the true story, the more mind-boggling it is – specifically how her gender enabled her to evade the police for a long time, with many refusing to believe a woman could be behind such an enterprise.
June Hawkins
But she didn't go unnoticed by another key female in this story: June Hawkins. Played by Juliana Aidén Martinez in the show, June Hawkins was a real-life Miami police sargeant, and played an integral part of Griselda's capture and conviction.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Griselda creator Doug Miro said: “It was amazing, that we’re doing the first show about a [female] narco and it was a female cop who discovered her presence in Miami – who pieced together the size of her organisation, who understood and recognised what she was doing on the ground."
What make the story all the more remarkable is Hawkins sort of fell into the role. “A fireman who Hawkins went on a date with told her that the police department was hiring because they needed both women and Spanish speakers,” Miro continues. “June had never thought about being a police officer. She just wanted the health benefits.”
But it was clear Hawkins had a talent for police work. In a Law Enforcement Talk podcast recorded in 2017 she says: "I speak Spanish and in those days, there weren't that many Spanish speakers on the department and they used me as kind of like an intelligence analyst to filter through all the names of all the people and make out who they were. And then I'd talk to informants and I'd write all these memos. I prepared a big report that wound up going to Washington with about 40 cases connected to it."
Despite having never wanted to be a police officer, Hawkins became one of the first female homicide detectives in the Miami PD, and played a major role in bringing Griselda – and many others – to justice.
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After joining in the 1970s, Hawkins eventually retired from the police force in 2004 and moved from Miami to Tennessee with her husband Al Singleton, a former Miami-Dade drug homicide detective who was also central to the team that captured Griselda Blanco.
She has one son, Eric Reynolds, pictured with her above in May 2022, who followed the same career path as his mum, joining the Boynton Beach Police Department as an officer.
