DRUG TASK FORCE LEADER CHAMPION OF YOUNG VICTIMS

Lori Moriarty led a push for new laws to protect children from the
dangers of home methamphetamine labs.

Lori Moriarty once swore that she would never become a police officer.

She saw the toll it took on her father, an officer in Westminster for
16 years.

"My father is so emotional, so sensitive," she says. "He would get too
attached to his cases.

"I remember telling my mom, 'It's really a crappy job."'

But Moriarty, born in St. Joseph Hospital 42 years ago and raised in
Adams County just south of the Thornton city limit, has changed.

The local girl grew up, went away, came back and became what she swore
she never would - a police officer.

As commander of the North Metro Task Force, she is recognized locally
and nationally for her work as the leader of a 19-person crew fighting
drug dealing and manufacturing in the northern Denver suburbs.

"I'm not as emotional as my father," she says of her success behind a
badge.

Moriarty and the task force have received awards for their work.

Moriarty is renowned for her efforts on behalf of children raised amid
the chaotic and chemical-impregnated world of illicit methamphetamine
laboratories, better known as meth labs.

It's a world where living and breathing in a closed environment while
meth is cooking, where playing and crawling across meth-stained
carpets and brushing against meth-stained walls make innocent
children something akin to meth addicts, Moriarty says, citing studies.

Maybe she isn't as emotional as her father, but Moriarty vividly
recalls the night of April 4, 2002, when a member of the task force,
dressed head to toe in a special suit designed to protect him from the
hazardous environment of the home meth lab they were raiding, walked
out of the house with a 14-month-old child in his arms.

"Oh, my God! My guys have protective suits on for protection, and this
child is wearing a diaper. What exposure has he had?" she remembers
thinking.

That led to her and leaders of other drug task forces in the state
pushing for a law protecting children from the ravages of living with
a meth lab.

She told legislators that children are taken to hospitals with
chemical illnesses and burns because they were around the
manufacturing process or unknowingly drank the ingredients. Many
children found in meth-lab homes have rotted teeth or none at all
from ingesting methamphetamine or ingredients left in soda bottles in
the refrigerator, she told lawmakers.

Now it is felony child abuse to manufacture drugs around children.

She recently was given the Friend of Children Award from Advocates of
Children for the work she has done to change the way police, the
judiciary and social services treat children when they become victims
of their parents' drug use.

"The kids always give you the strength to try to help change their
lives," she says.

"I have a lot of kids," the unmarried Moriarty says. "There's a ton of
them I'd like to take home with me."

That wasn't her first award. In 2001 she was Thornton's Employee of
the Year, and in 2002 she won the Adams County Peace Officer of the
Year prize and was named America's Outstanding High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area Task Force Commander of the Year by the Office of
National Drug Control Policy.

Tom Gorman is one of her fans. He's head of the Rocky Mountain High
Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federally funded, multistate drug
enforcement task force with its headquarters in Denver.

"I would sum her up us as an extremely dedicated professional who
gives her heart and soul to her job," Gorman says.

"She pushes to make things happen," he says. "I just think the world
of her. I'm proud that she represents Colorado."

After graduating from Ranum High School in 1981, Moriarty went to the
University of North Dakota on a basketball scholarship as a
5-feet-8-inch guard. But the 30-degree-below-zero temperatures in
Williston, N.D., motivated her to shorten her stay. She came home and
attended the University of Colorado at Denver.

Growing up, sports were her main interest.

"If it was a team sport, I couldn't get enough of it - basketball,
volleyball," she says.

Moriarty then left Denver for Southern California, where she worked as
a recreation therapist for handicapped children and coached basketball.

She returned to the Denver area to be near her ill grandfather, "who I
idolized. Family is very important to me," she says.

Moriarty went to work as a park ranger at Standley Lake. Then, with
some encouragement from a Denver policewoman, decided to give police
work a try.

She joined the Thornton Police Department in 1987.

Her tenure as commander of the North Metro Task Force hasn't been all
smooth sailing.

Moriarty was vilified in the media nationally when the task force
tried to force the Tattered Cover bookstore to reveal what book it had
mailed to a suspect in a meth-lab bust.

The case went to the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled against the
task force but did set up a procedure whereby police might pursue such
evidence in the future.

One newspaper editorial went so far as to suggest that she resign,
Moriarty recalls.

She smiles at that notion.