SAPD's First Female Officer Recalls Patrol in the '70s

In 1971, Peggy Farmer was arguably one of the most famous women in San Angelo. For the better part of a year she made front-page news, was the subject of countless articles, and even had people asking for her autograph.

Looking back, Farmer describes the time as “crazy” and “unbelievable”, but she is nonetheless proud to have broken ground and made history as San Angelo’s first female police officer.

Farmer was 23 when she joined the police force, and says her application took the department by surprise. “I just don’t think they were that prepared for females back in the day,” she said in a recent interview. “It did, however, break ground for females to be able to go in and apply. Women started applying after that, which I was real glad to see. Women had not applied prior to that.”

The decision to become an officer had been a lifelong dream, Farmer said, and she had never seen her sex as a limitation. When she applied and was accepted she was met with some difficulty, but says she never felt discriminated against on the basis of gender.

“They just really didn’t know how to deal with a female officer, they didn’t know how to train a female officer, they just weren’t prepared,” she said. “I walked into the office out of the blue and really and truly not much thought had been given to it. Today it’s a whole lot different, but you can only imagine how it must have been years and years ago.”

Back then, Farmer said, police work was much different than it is today, and much more isolated. When she started in ’71 there were no computers in the cars, no way to pull up background information, no readily available photos of suspects.

“It was tough,” she said. “You didn’t have the technology you have today and you literally were in this blind with the exception of dispatch. You were on your own out there. You weren’t riding with any one, you were just strictly on your own.”

As the sole woman on the force and the first in the city—some have said she was the first even in west Texas—Farmer attracted a lot of attention. She said the reaction of the public was often one of disbelief and she often had to clarify that she was indeed a bonafide officer.

“It seemed to me like I stayed on the front page of the paper. There were articles on me constantly. They really just couldn’t believe that you were a cop,” she said. “A lot of people thought I was a meter maid and I told them, ‘Well, no, I’m not a meter maid I’m a police officer. I’m actually in a patrol car, I’m actually patrolling and I actually carry a gun.’”

“Nobody could believe it,” she continued. “It just went on and on like that. I would pull over and stop someone and someone would pull up behind me and they’d get out of the car just to get my autograph! It was crazy, absolutely crazy. It was unbelievable. It was such an oddity that people had seen it in the newspaper—they’d heard about it—but they couldn’t believe it.  So that’s the kind of reaction I got. I was there for a year but it never stopped, it never let up. It was crazy back then.”

After about a year on the police force, Farmer’s mother fell ill and she left the department to take car of her, which was custom at that time. “Back in those days, the daughters took care of their parents; that’s just what you did,” she said.

Around the same time she was involved in an incident while on patrol involving an intoxicated male that turned into a huge deal that escalated to a grand jury indictment. Farmer didn’t want to go into detail as to what happened in that case, but describes the time as very political—particularly because she was a female officer—and says the combination of personal family matters and the case at work led to her decision not to return to the department.

“It was a heck of a ride,” she said, looking back. “I really felt like I could have stayed with it—should have stayed with it—but I was probably further ahead of my time than I should have been for those days. I really enjoyed it and it broke ground and that’s all that mattered to me.”

After leaving the police force, Farmer continued a lifelong tradition of working predominantly male-dominated professions. For several years she worked for the Department of Transportation out at Goodfellow Air Force Base and also tested tires off base. When her late husband Archie passed away, she opened a bar in Grape Creek named after him and ran that for 12 years with her daughter before being ironically hit by a drunk driver.

“I decided I just wanted out of that [after the accident]. I’ve been kind of retired since then until I got the call to come do this,” she said, referencing her current job as an ‘oil field cop’ for TriCorps Security on Rocker B Ranch. “ I was told they wanted ex police officers.”

Farmer says her current job as a security guard is mostly about enforcing the speed limit on the ranch, but that she enjoys it and that it reminds her of her days on patrol. “It gets kind of hairy out here sometimes,” she said. “We just look out for the ranch and the property and the people, and that’s about it. We run into some pretty strange stuff, but that’s our job and that’s what we do. I put in about 16 hours a day to do it.”

Rocker B Ranch funds Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital, and Farmer describes the people that work on the ranch as an inspiration to make her strive to do a better job.

“I absolutely love the people that work on Rocker B Ranch,” she said. They’re just incredible people and I love to watch them work every day. It’s a big deal to me. It means a lot to me to be a part of that, even just to be able to work as security on their ranch. Makes me want to do a better job. I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile at 65, at this late stage in the game.”

Peggy Farmer has two children, Shelby Farmer, who helped her mother run Archie’s for over a decade, and Michael Farmer, who worked for the Coast Guard for several years before returning to San Angelo and joining the Sheriff’s Office. Her granddaughter, Cheyenne, is studying to become a criminal profiler for the FBI.

For women considering going into male-dominated fields, Farmer says, “do absolutely the best that you know how to do. Don’t try to compete, just get out there and do what you’re trained to do and do it as best as you can do it.”