A 21-year veteran for the Los Angeles Police Department, Teresa has served the last eight years within the Crisis Response Support Section, Mental Evaluation Unit, as a Detective Field Supervisor. During her tenure with the LAPD, she has gained extensive experience with critical debriefs of persons involved in critical incidents as well as extensive investigative experience. While assigned to the case management section, she developed strategies for management of high profile mentally ills subjects who attempted suicide by cop, school violence, barricaded incidents, and abuse of services for both police and fire first responders. As a field supervisor, she has been able to observe/identify the challenges first responders face when responding to calls involving mental illness and reviewed use of force reports that resulted from first responder contacts with persons with mental illness. From this experience, she has provided training to law enforcement communities across the country in a variety of subjects including first responder training involving mental illness and mental health crisis, as well as crisis communication/de-escalation of contacts. In addition, she has provided the educational community in training involving school violence. She has earned her Master's Degree in Emergency Services Management from California State University Long Beach.

Teresa is currently an active member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the California Association of Hostage Negotiators and is serving as the Southern Region Treasurer. In addition she volunteers in a law enforcement military support group for law enforcement officers where training is provided as well as support.