Guarding royal families can yield $1,000 a day
Monica Duperon Rodriguez welled up with feelings of awe when she stepped off a charter flight onto the Serengeti in Africa for a job assignment.
“The thought that came to my mind was: ‘This poor girl from this police department is standing in the Serengeti,’ ” she said. “I would have never in my entire life imagined myself being there.”
A layperson might mistake the job that swept her across the ocean as “bodyguard.” Professionals trained to her level of diplomacy, communication, and planning earn the title of “executive protection specialist,” or EP agent.
Rodriguez said her training started early. As the oldest child growing up in a one-bedroom apartment supported by a single mother, she felt a need to protect her three siblings from the drugs and drive-by shootings in her Chicagoarea neighborhood.
She spent three years in college while working a full-time job and caring for her two small children. After taking some time off, she was sponsored by her local police department to attend the police academy because it needed female officers, especially ones who spoke Spanish. She chose the academy instead of finishing her college degree.
Rodriguez worked in law enforcement for 15 years, much of it in Florida, first as a narcotics detective and a hostage negotiator on the SWAT team, and then as a corporal detective in the burglary division.
Through work on a human-trafficking task force, protecting and interpreting for American missionaries in Guatemala, she made contacts with people who connected her to an opportunity to work for an ultra-high-net-worth individual. She was flown in for a daylong interview and was told the person’s identity only when she landed. Once she got the job, she began flying on private jets with someone from a globally known family.
Rodriguez can’t say who, as one of the primary commandments of the job is discretion, which felt like second nature to her after her experience working undercover.
For several years, starting during her time in law enforcement, Rodriguez studied martial arts, practicing for four hours a day, three times a week. She took jujitsu classes that cost about $100 a month, and trained in martial arts twice a week for $30 a session. This training, as well as her negotiation skills learned as a police officer, transferred to her job in protection.
In law enforcement, she was making around $42,000 annually; in executive protection, she has made as much as $200,000 a year.
“For me, education is extremely important,” Rodriguez said. “How you get it — that’s an entirely different thing. College is not always the answer, but education is paramount to personal growth and to really being able to identify potential opportunities.”
Amber Haddock also came from a law enforcement background when, just a few days after a 14-day executive protection training program, she flew to what was supposed to be a three-month assignment: guarding, without a gun or badge, a 17-year-old Middle Eastern princess living in Washington, D.C., under the guise that she was the young royal’s American host mom.
After the trial, the princess’ family decided to keep her on as a contractor for two years. Haddock drove the princess and her friends to her college classes and social events. On trips abroad, she flew with the young client on her private jet.
Female operatives can often disappear into roles, portraying the executive assistant, the aunt or the nanny.
“We don’t exist and then, when we do exist, stuff has already hit the fan and we are evacuating the client,” Haddock said.
Much of the job involves planning in advance. Executive protection specialists prepare contingency plans, routes and backup routes. They locate the nearest hospitals and “hard points” — their term for safe locations.
“What if you were in Hawaii and the fire started with your client?” Haddock said, referring to the Maui fire. “Do you know where you would take them?”
When looking for a job in executive protection, individuals can find fulltime positions at companies, or work independently, taking on details (what they call contract jobs) on teams or for clients as they arise, from dignitaries, celebrities or corporate leaders. The salary varies widely depending on location, client needs, threat level and other factors, but a full-time EP job can often pay in the six figures.
Miranda Coppoolse, a security behavioral analyst at MC Global Security Consulting, came to work in protection from a place of resiliency, having survived kidnapping, trafficking and abuse from a criminal gang.
“I didn’t want other people to go through what I went through,” said Coppoolse, who lives outside of Amsterdam and has an associate degree in security management, as well as training in criminal psychology, human trafficking prevention and counterterrorism. “I thought with all the experience that I had from my past, I might be able to help other people. And so I started to work out and train.”