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Tampa Police Rookie Sits With First Lady

Photo provided by DIANE LOPES

Air Force Senior Airman Diane Lopes in Iraq.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 28, 2008

Updated: 01/28/2008 10:26 pm

TAMPA — Diane Lopes, whose job as a Tampa police officer last year lasted less than three weeks before she was called up to active military duty, was a guest of first lady Laura Bush at tonight's State of the Union address before Congress.

Air Force Senior Airman Lopes, as she is now called, deployed to Iraq in August and within a month was injured in a mortar attack, said Air Force Capt. Cathleen Snow, with the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force base in Cocoa Beach. Lopes, 38, was sent back home where she recuperated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Maryland. While there she was awarded the Purple Heart.

The Pentagon chose Lopes to be a guest of the first lady.

Lopes was the fifth woman in the history of the rescue wing to be injured in combat, according to , the wing's newsletter, Angel's Wings.

The Tampa police officer-turned-airman, in Iraq for less than a month, was working security at the Kirkuk Air Base when a mortar hit the ground near a wall less than 30 yards from Lopes, the article said.

Shrapnel sprayed her, her left leg was broken in two places and hot metal sliced through the tendons in her right wrist. One collapsed. The blast perforated her right eardrum and burned much of her body.

The article quotes her: "I said, 'Hell no, I'm not dying here today. No way.' "

Originally from Connecticut, Lopes calls Tampa home. With a background in corrections, she was hired by Tampa police in March, police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said.

Lopes had just completed the police academy and spent less than three weeks riding with training officers when she got her call to active duty.

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