She followed her mother to Houston County and found her calling on I-75

Houston County is home to many law enforcement and first responder agencies; one of the most recognizable is the Georgia State Patrol.

Trooper First Class Rachel Iverson is one of the troopers you’ll see on local stretches of Interstate 75 and surrounding roads doing preventative work.

For GSP, that includes the expected things like DUI calls, seatbelts, cell phone usage and accidents. But they also assist local agencies often, handling accidents and other incidents so they can focus their attention on more domestic issues.

“I like to do speed and I like it on the interstate, but I also like school zones,” Iverson said. “Because a lot of the school zones around here don’t have flashing lights. I’ve contacted Houston County and I was like, ‘Hey where is your problem area?'”

“I’m not sure why I like speed enforcement. Prevention is what we’re doing. Sitting in a school zone, I’m out there because it’s a problem area for one, and why are you going so fast when you’re going to drop your kid off or you’re passing schools and you see all these parents and all theses school buses, why are we going fast? Pay attention, because you’re not the only one in the world.”

Iverson grew up in Orlando, Florida and has always been connected to law enforcement. Her mother was law enforcement for the city of Orlando, her sister was a dispatcher and her brother-in-law was in the field, too.

Even before she was official she was connected to the career on the civilian side; she worked as a Community Service Officer in Orlando for two years.

“I did a lot of accident reports, but I could do fraud report, a burglary, vandalism, anything like that, go take fingerprints as long as they didn’t know who did it,” Iverson said. “We only carried pepper spray, so we didn’t deal with suspects. But it’s kind of similar to what I’m doing now, it was like an assist to the sworn, so I could take care of the little stuff so they could do the bigger stuff.”

Like many after high school, Iverson was looking for a job where she didn’t have to go back to school.

“I think it’s all I know,” Iverson said. “I like interacting with the public and when I was trying to think of what I could do for a full-time job, I was like, ‘Well, what can I do where I don’t have to go back to school?’ I couldn’t think of anything, and I was like, ‘Well, I guess I’ll go back to what I know, which is law enforcement.'”

Iverson followed her mother to Houston County in December of 2021 and by July of 2022 she enrolled in trooper school.

While she did technically avoid going back to school, trooper training was an intense experience.

“Trooper school is no joke,” Iverson said. “It’s not just basic, it’s advanced. So we’ll do advanced firearms, so there’s two weeks of firearms. We’ll do advanced driving, so there’s two weeks of driving. A lot of people fail out of trooper school based on firearms and driving.

“It’s a mental game. It’s really long and it’s very hard, but if you’re physically fit and you don’t have to worry about that before you go to trooper school, you’ll be fine. I will say as a female you’re the minority in a male-dominated job and if you’re not tough, you won’t last.”

Being tough isn’t just a physical attribute, either. Law enforcement doesn’t garner much praise from the public, especially from those getting pulled over.

For Iverson, separating her personal from her work life is what allows her to deal with the thankless nature of the job, as well as be unbiased in her distribution of justice.

“My feelings for the day don’t dictate how I do my job. My job will be done the same way every time,” Iverson said. “I think some people get into, ‘That person is in a bad mood, that’s why I got a ticket.’ I give everybody a ticket, but it’s not because I’m just having a bad day. There’s a point where you have to separate what’s happening in your personal life from your job.”

Iverson has been serving Houston County and surrounding communities since graduating in 2023, working hard to keep our streets safe.