Quotation

She was a “slick sleeve”—not a stripe of rank on her uniform—and made the jump to detective by being a twofer. She was Mexican-American and spoke both English and Spanish fluently. === “I do. Everybody counts or nobody counts—isn’t that what you told me once?” === “I also learned much more from this man, who became a friend. I learned perseverance. I learned compassion. I learned what it is to make do with the cards you are dealt. I saw firsthand the resilience of the human spirit. Orlando never asked, ‘Why me?’ He just asked, ‘What’s next?’ === the girl’s parents carried out two cultural traditions, the mother presenting her daughter with the “last doll,” symbolizing the end of childhood, and the father changing her shoes from flat sandals to high heels, symbolizing the beginning of womanhood.