In the 1960s and ’70s, as the second major wave of the women’s rights movement gained national momentum, it was still quite a stretch to imagine a woman working as a homicide detective in the old boys’ culture of the Chicago Police Department.
But as a 19-year-old stenographer for CPD’s Area 5 homicide division, Cindy Pontoriero had a clear vision of herself in that role. Pontoriero had accompanied detectives to crime scenes, hospitals and homes to record interviews the officers conducted. Watching them work to solve difficult murder cases, she decided she wanted to do more than take notes.
“I was kind of in awe of all of it,” Pontoriero told the Tribune in 2004. “From that moment on, I knew what I needed to do.”
Nearly a decade later, she was among thousands of CPD officers who took the exam to be a detective. Her high score qualified her — and in 1972 she became the first woman promoted to the role in department history.
On Aug. 22, following an illness, Pontoriero, whose full first name was Cynthia, died at Discovery Village, a senior living center in Des Plaines. She was 84.
The story behind how she got to take the detective’s test personified Pontoriero’s independent, can-do attitude, recalled retired CPD Capt. Joe McMahon, who was in her detective class.
At the time, female officers were not officially permitted to take the detective’s exam. But Pontoriero wrote “C. Pontoriero” on the initial exam application so her gender would not be known. She arrived at the testing site with the necessary paperwork and surprised the sergeants passing out the test. They didn’t know what else to do but to go ahead and allow her to take the exam, McMahon said.
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“She was a trailblazer,” McMahon said. “She identified what her goal was and she figured out a way to get there. Just an incredible person.”
After a couple of years in the youth division, Pontoriero moved to Area 5 homicide on the Northwest Side. George Ruckrich, then a sergeant there, said Pontoriero brought “an upbeat attitude” to a job that could be emotionally suffocating. Ruckrich recalled that Pontoriero was especially adept at interviewing women and children who had endured something traumatic.
“Homicide was a tough game,” Ruckrich said. But he explained that Pontoriero helped move many cases forward by connecting with female witnesses and victims in ways male officers often could not. She also was, he said, the most efficient detective in the unit at translating information and evidence into coherent, well-written reports.
“She would seek out the truth, no matter what it was,” Ruckrich said. “You saw a lot of bad things, but she didn’t let it get to her.”
“She was an icon,” Kathy Kajari, now a retired CPD deputy chief, told the Tribune in 2004. “… Not just because she was a detective, but she was a homicide detective, which still has that aura about it.”
In 1974, Pontoriero married fellow officer Iggy Grimaldi, and they had two children, Lary and Dominic. As her children got older, she rose through the ranks — to sergeant in 1985 and lieutenant in 1990 — and went on to oversee districts across the city. She retired in 2004 as watch commander of the 17th District in Albany Park, leaving the force at 62 after 37 years with the department because, at the time, the mandatory retirement age was 63.
When she did officially retire, she did so with little fanfare. She later told the Tribune she wanted her career as a Chicago police officer to end quietly.
Indeed, though a pioneer for women officers and detectives who followed her, Pontoriero sought no acclaim for her achievements. Her son Lary, a middle school teacher and sports coach in Oak Park, said his mother “never wanted to be the face of a movement.” She once told a reporter, “I wasn’t doing it for women’s lib.”
As Grimaldi put it: “She just wanted to be a cop.”
Besides her sons, she is survived by grandchildren Dominic, Maggie, Nora and Ella; her sister Theresa (Michael); her nieces, Candice (Gordon) and Melanie (Trey); her nephews, Charles and David; as well as many cousins and extended family. Services have already been held.
Mendell is a freelance reporter.