[Pantyholic]

First posted March 2004

On the outside, Heladio Gonzalez was all toughness and swagger. On the inside, he was tormented.
"I was really lost, I was really in limbo for a lot of years. I did my best to make it all go away, but I wasn't very successful. I was pretty good at being a guy, but I couldn't do it anymore."
His wife kicked him out of their home last year after he began spending more and more time dressed in women's clothing. Then, on Jan. 6, he delivered a letter to his supervisor announcing his decision to live and work as a woman.
Officer Heladio Gonzalez would no longer be teaching firearms at the Police Academy. Officer Maria Gonzalez would.

His supervisor read the letter to Gonzalez's co-workers the next morning. "He got very upset, it was like he was reading a death notice," Gonzalez said. "The room got very quiet. It was terrible."
For Gonzalez, a 36-year member of the Philadelphia police force, the declaration was liberating as well as agonizing. No more buying women's clothing, then throwing it away. No more drinking to, as he called it, "self-medicate."

Gonzalez, 57, is believed to be the first transgender officer in the department's history. Since assuming a female identity, she has lost family, friends and colleagues, but has gained a new circle of supporters as she prepares for gender-reassignment surgery.
Full story can be found HERE