TO SERVE and protect is a clear vision and mission of policemen who take their career to heart.
This is how Senior Police Officer (SPO) 3 Annabelle Perlas-Dacudao of the Davao City Police Office (DCPO) keeps herself inspired at work as a senior and administrative officer of San Pedro Police Station.
It was a long, eventful story of survival before SPO3 Dacudao became a member of the Philippine National Police (PNP).
She’s one of 15 children of a trader and a full-time mother. Thus, in the early 1980s, she left her hometown Surallah in South Cotabato to work as a helper in a relative’s printing shop in Davao City.
She sent herself to school with her meager earnings and finished Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Mindanao (UM) in 1991.
"Actually, I didn't expect to become a policewoman, considering my course was an engineering,” she said.
Seeing a better tenure with the police organization, she took the exam and passed.
“It’s different today, because at that time, no matter what course you've finished, as long as you passed the examination," she said.
Since joining the police organization, she has been taking every opportunity for career advancement and enjoying her work.
"I've been twenty three years in service up to this day, but seems like yesterday when I entered this profession. You do not know the time passing if you really love your work," she said.
Perlas-Dacudao finished Military Science from MS-11 to MS-43 in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), which today is a training for Police Officer (PO) 1.
In 1992, she was assigned to the Regional Mobile Force (RMF) of Camp Engineering Office in Camp Catitipan before being assigned to the Provincial Police Office in Davao del Norte and then the Regional Chief Office in Police Reg'l Office (PRO) 11.
She was later transferred to the Police Community Relation (PCR) at the Davao City Police Office for administration and assigned to the Women and Childrens' Protection Desk (WCPD) in Tugbok Police Station.
She was again assigned to the Mobile Patrol Group (MPG) in 2009. Through those years, she earned distinctions, among them the Medalya ng Papuri, Medalya ng Kasanayan and Medalya ng Ugnayang Pampulisya..
She has this advice to all other men and women in uniform: Never abuse your authority.
"Like the other men in uniform, they waste their ranks. They commit crimes using their position as policemen, and so come regrets," she said.
SPO3 Dacudao has three children.