By Sherry Jacobson
Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — After 17 years with the Dallas Police Department, Officer Joseph Grabowski showed up at work one day sporting makeup, a feminine hairstyle and a new first name: Deborah.
The 44-year-old officer was scared and relieved that the secret was finally out.
“I have always felt like a woman and, suddenly, everybody knew I was going to have the surgery to make it real,” she said.
Because the city of Dallas does not offer health insurance coverage for sex-change operations, Grabowski paid for the costly procedure herself.
In recent years, a few cities - and a growing number of private employers - have decided to cover the cost of these surgeries, and the city of Fort Worth is considering whether to join them.
For a brief time in 2006, it was a minor curiosity that a Dallas policeman had become a policewoman. Co-workers had to learn to call Grabowski “Debbie” instead of “Joe.”
The public didn’t appear to notice, other than one woman who called to complain about a male officer wearing heavy makeup patrolling “in drag,” Grabowski recalled.
“We did everything we could to make Debbie comfortable, and I think we did a good job,” said Lt. Andy Harvey, a police department spokesman.
“There were no major issues. Joe was always a hard-working officer, and I think the same can be said of Debbie.”
In other ways, the transition from Joe to Debbie was not so easy.
With no insurance coverage for the sex change, technically called sex-reassignment surgery, Grabowski had to save for years to pay for the series of surgeries and other procedures that ultimately cost nearly $80,000.
Copyright 2009 Dallas Morning News