I’ve stood in rooms full of decorated officers, politicians, and community champions. I know how to hold my own in high-stakes spaces. But hand me a celebrity and I completely fall apart.
It’s a ridiculous impediment. I know it. I cannot explain it. And it paralyzed me the entire night at the Women of the Shield gala.
Let me back up.
Weyni Langdon — the woman who had the audacity to build something out of nothing — started Women of the Shield ten years ago with a brunch and a bold question: Why not? Why shouldn’t women in law enforcement have pathways, mentorship, and visible leadership? Why shouldn’t they have a room of their own?
That brunch became a decade-long movement.
And that night, they gave me a legacy award for being the first speaker at the inaugural breakfast. I accepted it the only way I know how — by making clear it belonged to the people who actually did the work. The clipboard people. The ones who stay late and fundraise and push through when the mission is inconvenient.
But here’s where the night gets interesting.
Actress Amy Morton was there. You know her as Trudy Platt — the desk sergeant on Chicago PD who looks at you like she can smell a lie from three zip codes away. She received an award that evening and wasted no time reminding the room that she’s a fraud. “I’m not actually a cop,” she clarified, with the kind of deadpan only Trudy Platt could pull off.
But she wasn’t there as a fraud. She was there because visibility matters. How she portrays the real heroes shapes how the world sees them. That’s not nothing.
And then there was David Eigenberg. You might know him as Steve from Sex and the City. These days he plays Senior Firefighter Christopher Herrmann on Chicago Fire — and my wife has seen every single episode. I know this because while I was standing a respectful and cowardly distance away, she marched straight over to tell him so. I was dying. She was thriving.
He didn’t come to accept an award that night. He showed up to support Amy Morton. That’s it. That was his whole reason for being there.
The night ended the way all great Chicago nights end — outside in negative-degree temperatures, Uber canceling on us, wind cutting through our good intentions.
David was warming up his truck. He looked over. “Can I give you a lift?”
I murmured something gracious and noncommittal.
My wife said, “Yes, please.”
And that’s how we ended up in a celebrity’s pickup truck, surrounded by empty chip bags, navigating the city like it was perfectly normal. My wife took the front seat and immediately gave him her honest opinions on several Chicago Fire storylines. He missed our exit. Twice. None of us cared.
Because somewhere between the first missed exit and the second, he started talking about his troubled childhood. About feeling like he didn’t deserve where he’d landed in life. About the gratitude he carries for his wife. And the whole night snapped into focus.
He didn’t come to be seen. He came to see her. No award. No agenda. Just showing up.
And that’s the thing about Women of the Shield that I don’t think gets said enough. Yes, it’s a movement. Yes, it’s a decade of pathways built for women who needed them. But underneath all of it — the mentorship programs, the advocacy, the network — is something simpler and harder than any of that.
People kept showing up.
Weyni showed up ten years ago with nothing but a bold question and a brunch reservation. The Gold Star families showed up carrying grief so heavy that most of us would have stayed home. And a man with no stake in the outcome warmed up his truck on a bitterly cold night because his friend was being honored, and that was reason enough.
Presence is underrated. We talk a lot about vision and audacity and legacy, and those things matter. But none of them survive without the people who simply refuse to not be there.
That’s what I took home that night. Not the award.
Show up. For the mission. For your people. For the room that needs you in it, even when no one is keeping score.
Especially then.
🖤 Onward and upward,
Kristen
P.S. Your advice is always welcome. How can I serve you better? Tell me what you need from this content?
Tell me: kristen@kristenziman.com
