Chicago

My name is Mary Ann Harris and I've been a security officer for 13 years. I've struggled to raise four daughters on my salary. Fortunately I've been blessed with straight A students who are going to college on academic scholarships. Otherwise, I don't know how I would afford to help them make a better life.

When one of my daughters had her child, on my salary living paycheck to paycheck like most of us do, I wasn't able to help her like I wanted to. For a while, she had to sign up for food stamps to feed herself and her child. Those are the sacrifices we are forced to make in this job.

No one who carries as much responsibility as we do should have to struggle this much to make ends meet. We risk our lives to protect Chicago.

Recently, in my building, we had a bomb scare. Fortunately, I've worked in some of the buildings that take training seriously and I've taken training through the training fund on my own time, so I was prepared. When a tenant told me a man was refusing to leave the office and said he "had the keys to heaven and earth," I knew that was a sign he could have a bomb.

I immediately called our security director and he was able to get the man to the lobby, where I had to call the police and inform them of the bomb threat without the man knowing what I was doing even though he was standing right next to me.

The police bomb squad saw batteries and wires in his brief case so they blew it up just outside the building and knocked out three of the windows. When building tenants saw the police cordon off the building, they wanted to get out, but the security officers had to keep everyone calm and safely in their offices so no one would get hurt.

Unfortunately, I know from other buildings I've worked in that many of us aren't as prepared for emergencies as we think we should be. In some buildings, a one-time evacuation training is all a lot of us get. That's not enough to prepare us for what we might happen on any given day.

Security officers are not miracle workers. If there's a fire, there's no magic button we can press and make it all better. We have to be trained and we have to have confidence that we know what to, because otherwise someone could lose their life.