Over her career, Navarro Gercone was a corrections officer, sergeant, lieutenant, and assistant chief at the sheriff’s office, but was never a sworn police officer. She even attended the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Academy.

As a young mother on public aide, Navarro Gercone went to wait in line to apply at the sheriff’s office so that her boyfriend could get a job. While in line she was also given an application by accident. She took the application, completed it, and paid $20 to submit it.

“I was never interested in law enforcement. I didn’t know what the sheriff did, I didn’t know who the sheriff was,” Navarro Gercone said.

By the time they called her in 1994 she had already had her second son and needed the benefits, so she took the job.

As Navarro Gercone continued in her career, what made her love law enforcement was the impact she had on people’s lives and all the different people she would meet. 

“As my career progressed, it was learning how much my little tiny role could actually make a difference in the entire process,” Navarro Gercone said. 

This is what lead her to wanting to take promotional exams. After her first five years as a deputy, she decided to take the sergeant’s test. By this time, she had her fair share of supervisors, good and bad.

“The female supervisors at the time were not the type of female supervisors I felt I needed,” Navarro Gercone said. “My motivation was that I wanted to be the type of female supervisor that other female deputies would want to aspire to be.”

Navarro Gercone went from working at a court facility to being a sergeant in charge of a street unit. She found this to be the most difficult transition in her career.

She never worked the street and the unit she was put in charge of was all men. Most of which had been in the unit for years. The deputies had seen a lot of change and now there was this 20-something year old woman coming to take over their unit, she was nervous.  

“I asked questions, I remained humble, I learned the job and eventually I was there for nine years with them,” Navarro Gercone said.

She links a lot of her success to relationships. She was able to create good relationships with the people in her unit.

“They wanted to work for me, they wanted to make me look good, they wanted me to be successful and they wanted the unit to be successful,” Navarro Gercone said.

Becoming lieutenant was the hardest for her to accomplish. This is where she worked under Kelly Jackson and got the idea of women supporting women. Kelly Jackson was a deputy chief at the time and one of the people that nominated Navarro Gercone to attend the FBI National Academy.

“Eventually watching her, I saw a woman whose career could not only go up to my level but surpass my level,” Jackson said. 

“Of all the female supervisors I ever had that was the type of supervisor I was looking for. Someone who commanded respect, did the job and didn’t take any bullshit,” Navarro Gercone said.

Being a woman and going to work for a woman was very important to Navarro Gercone. When she was going into the interview to become lieutenant, she was asked by another woman in human resources why she thought she could do the job if she had kids.

“Luckily I had Kelly’s footsteps to follow in and some other female supervisors that laid the groundwork I wanted to follow,” Navarro Gercone said. 

In November of 2022, Tom Dart was elected to a fifth term as sheriff of Cook County, but Navarro Gercone plans to find a way to get her votes counted for before the next election. She has every intention of running again come 2026.