Pilots

In television cop lingo, Mary Lowery would be described as a Caucasian female in her early thirties, last seen in the vicinity of Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field wearing a regulation dark blue flight suit. Even if you couldn't pick her out of a police lineup with that description, here's one more clue: Lowery is the first, the only, woman pilot in New York City Police Department's 60-man — uh, 60-person — Aviation Unit.

A native New Yorker with an accent to prove it, Lowery is probably a cop first and a pilot second, though originally she aspired to be neither. After high school she attended a university in upstate New York, working towards a degree in elementary education. But after two years she moved home to Long Island and attended a local community college while working part-time in a Queens bank. This, of course, did not escape the attention of her father, Lieutenant James Lowery, NYPD, who is what you would call an old-fashioned Irish cop. One day he came home with an application to the NYC police academy and left it lying on a table. Mary Lowery found it the next day.

"I don't like to say this, and I hate the way it comes out, but it was a job to do," she says. "I never thought it could be me, but it was plausible, and it sounded intriguing and exciting." So she filled out the application and sent it in.

Nearly a year went by before she was admitted to the academy. There, in the five-month-long NYPD equivalent of boot camp, "they teach you just about everything," Lowery says. "Social science, law, police science, and physical conditioning; also, such practical skills as driving a police car and firing a weapon" — her dad's spare .38. Graduating in June 1984, she was assigned to the 104th Precinct in Queens — Archie Bunker's neighborhood.

After two years in a squad car, Lowery became the community affairs officer, acting as a liaison between the community and the precinct — "kind of a step up," she says. Around the same time, she met Sgt. Richard Martin. He had just been promoted and reassigned to the 104th Precinct from the NYPD Aviation Unit (which consists of two Bell 412s, four JetRangers, and one LongRanger) based at the otherwise decommissioned Floyd Bennett Field. Sergeant Martin was also a CFI, and he offered to give Lowery flying lessons. In no time at all, she had her private certificate. Thinking that police work in the aviation unit might also be exciting, Lowery applied for a transfer.

She steeled herself for a long wait. The turnover rate for the NYPD's specialty units crawls along at a sluggish pace. But only a few months after Lowery sent in her application, Aviation expanded from a 6 a.m.-to-12 p.m. duty shift into a round-the-clock operation. Suddenly, 10 pilot slots opened up, and Lowery became one of the chosen few — and the first to break the gender barrier. "I really didn't get a lot of abuse," she says. "Of course, there was some. But then, everything that women do on the police force is scrutinized. That's just the nature of things."

She and her fellow students spent the following few months learning to fly Robinson R22 helicopters in New Jersey; then with 80 hours and their commercial certificates under their gun belts, they transitioned into JetRangers and flew into the wild and woolly airspace above New York City. They learned the fine points of police flying, like hovering out of ground effect at 500 to 600 feet while keeping a spotlight on a particular point; flying the low, slow pattern used when searching for suspects; landing in difficult locations; operating the forward-looking infrared; and holding the JetRanger steady as someone rappels out onto a roof while listening to ATC, the police radio, and the base radio all at once — the hardest part, Lowery says.

By 1988, Lowery was a full-fledged member of the aviation unit. On the more glamorous side, she has flown VIPs such as New York City mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins, and former First Lady Barbara Bush. Most of it, however, is pure police work. Whenever the President is in town, Lowery and her fellow officers can be seen flying air cover for the motorcade, checking the rooftops for potential snipers.

They flew air cover during the four nights of the Washington Heights riots in July 1992 and later found a bullet hole in one of the helicopters. (Now, she says, "we carry ballistic materials in the floors and seats.") Then there are the medevac rescues, one of which particularly sticks out in her mind. "We had to medevac a burn victim from Brooklyn to a hyperbaric chamber in the Bronx," Lowery recalls in the clipped, emotionless vernacular of cops. "It was in poor weather, and we flew from light pole to light pole, even under a bridge."

Still, the NYPD Aviation Unit pretty much stayed out of the hearts and minds of the public — after all, a real New Yorker never looks up — until the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Lowery spent the day in a JetRanger, holding off a fleet of media helicopters while the 412 pilots landed rescue teams on the roofs of the beleaguered twin towers; she and the other pilots also flew in spare equipment such as emergency respirators, and they also flew medevac. Their bravery brought the unit local — and national — attention, and Lowery and the other pilots received departmental commendations.

As for the future, she has been going to school at night and just received her bachelor's degree in psychology. She would like to get her master's degree, then her doctorate, and eventually take up practice. Until then, though, Lowery plans to keep on flying.