Catherine Combes is a homicide detective with the Boulder-Springs Metroplex Police Department.

She came into the world on May 5, 1961, as American Astronaut Alan Shepherd waited in the Freedom 7 capsule atop a Redstone rocket for his fifteen minute flight into history.  Born in Derry, also known as Londonderry, Ireland, Catherine’s father, Jamie, was an officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).  Jamie, a Protestant loyalist, married republican Catholic Caitlin Walsh in the spring of 1960.  From the outset, their union isolated them from both family and friends.

After the death of young boy at the hands of the RUC in 1969, Jamie provided testimony regarding RUC excesses.  Caitlin was killed by a car bomb outside their home while getting ready to walk Catherine to school.  No one was prosecuted for the bombing, and it was never known whether the bombers were the IRA or the RUC.  Jamie and Catherine fled to America, and settled with Caitlan’s aunt and uncle in Garden Grove, California, where she graduated from high school at the age of 16 in 1977.  She attended California State University at Fullerton (Cal State Fullerton) on a basketball scholarship for two years before being drafted by the New York Stars in the Women’s Basketball League for the 1979-80 season.  She played with the Stars until the league folded in 1981.

Catherine joined finished a degree in criminal justice at Cal State Fullerton after leaving basketball.  By playing professionally, she had sacrificed both her scholarships and her eligibility.  After graduation, she became a patrol officer for the LAPD.  In 1989, she played a key undercover role that brought down an methamphetamine ring, and the story became a book, Full Court Press, written by sports reporter Penn Tilman.  The notoriety Catherine received from the book unintentionally led to the death of her father at the hands of the IRA in 1992.

After her father’s murder, she left Los Angeles for Colorado, and worked as a detective for the Boulder-Springs Metro Police Department (BSMPD).  The gold medallion she wears around her neck is a medallion of St. Michael, which was given to her father by her mother on their wedding day.