"My Friend"

Men never rattled little Alice McCarthy. She had dates when she was a girl, but her serious attention she reserved for her singing career. When that fizzled after a few broadcasts over Chicago's radio stations, Alice did not weep. In 1925, she joined the Chicago police force. By last week she had become a veteran and one of the city's best-known cops.

Alice is a brisk, sober, sandy-haired woman, with thin lips and level blue eyes. Even when she was a rookie, fellow cops on the auto-theft detail admired her for her cool nerve. She went anywhere, any time, and she carried her blue .38-caliber service pistol as naturally as she did her handbag. In a year, she built up quite a record of arrests.

The Finer Things. The cops wondered, at first, whether Alice would really use her .38. She settled that in 1927 when she surprised a 14-year-old boy stripping a car. When he tried to run away, she dropped him with a slug in the right thigh. In 1934, detailed to hunt purse-snatchers, she winged her second thief with one shot. A month later, she shot another thief.

No. 4 was tougher. He stepped up behind Alice, slugged her from behind, grabbed her purse and beat it. Alice straightened up, yelled "Stop!", let go at a range of 75 feet, and for the first and only time in her career killed a man.

By 1946, two more had been added to her list: a youth suspected of robbing parked couples, and a sailor who had tried to strong-arm her in a public park, when she was walking her beat. Otherwise, Alice McCarthy's life had taken on a fairly sedate pattern in her middle age. She lived alone in a South Side apartment, went to the opera, studied French and Italian and went to Mass on Sundays. "I like all the finer things of life," she said.

No. 7. Her beat was mostly in dark parks and lonely streets, where she kept an eye out for lost children and old women, female drunks and mashers. Her captain worried about her. "She has to take chances with all those morons," he said. But Alice did not worry. "I feel the revolver is part of me," she explained, primly. "At no time do I feel uncomfortable in darkest streets because I have the weapon I look upon as my friend."

One morning last week, 47-year-old Alice McCarthy and her friend went for their usual walk in Chicago's Grant Park. Alice wore a neat suit and a plain dark felt hat. As she walked down a park path, a hand grabbed her and a male voice said: "Come in here, baby." Alice jerked away, whirled when the man threatened to shoot and dropped him with a slug in the stomach. The ambulance people arrived to gather up No. 7, and Alice walked calmly off to the station to make out her report. Then she went back to her beat.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.