Teri Dixon

Greensboro, NC

Company Member since 2022

Just before her 5th birthday, Teri was selected for the children's television show Romper Room. The selection process was competitive and included a three-year waitlist. Parents registered their children, who were chosen based on their ability to follow instructions, maintain focus, and stay calm under bright studio lights - all of which describe Teri to a “T”. She skipped second grade, graduated from high school in three years, attended Azusa Pacific College at sixteen, and graduated at age twenty. She studied Tahitian and Hawaiian dance in high school, performed a few times at Disneyland, and was a top-ten finalist for Miss Teenage Los Angeles County at fourteen.

After college, she took a temporary job as a police dispatcher at the Alhambra Police Department. That “temporary” job lasted four years before she moved to the Los Angeles Police Department as a dispatcher. The next thirty years with the LAPD were spent in various positions, ending as a Senior Management Analyst II - the civilian equivalent of a lieutenant.

Notable assignments include: Robbery-Homicide Division, Internal Affairs Group, Force Investigation Division, the Police Commission, the Office of the Inspector General, and scheduling supervisor for the Chief of Police and the Newton Street and 77th Street Areas (two distinct, high-activity geographic divisions within South Los Angeles, serving as critical hubs for community policing and law enforcement operations in the Central & South Bureaus). She was awarded the Meritorious Unit Citation as a member of the Force Investigation Division, the highest unit citation a civilian employee of the LAPD can receive. Teri’s interesting side hustles include: credentialing for the Academy Awards, three Super Bowls, and several PGA golf tournaments; working security at the Salt Lake Olympics; and serving as the administrator for the Los Angeles Police Command Officers Association and the Peace Officers Association of Los Angeles County. She took a year’s leave of absence from the LAPD to serve as the adjutant to the Security Director of the Atlanta Olympic Games. (Yes, she can tell you about the Olympic Park bombing.)

You will find it no surprise that she is on a first-name basis with Miles Corwin, James Ellroy, and Michael Connelly, Los Angeles-based authors and journalists specializing in crime and the criminal justice system. An interesting fact is that Teri’s co-worker and friend, Rick Jackson, a former LAPD homicide detective, is the primary inspiration for Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, particularly regarding the character's return to work as a cold-case investigator after retirement.

When Teri retired in 2014, she and her mom relocated to Oak Island. Since then, she has volunteered at the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office and the Special Olympics. Never one to sit still, she takes numerous weekly adult lessons in tap, jazz, ballet, lyrical, clogging, musical theatre, baton twirling, and is learning to crochet and play mahjong.

Teri’s early years with the Hi-Steppers were under the direction of Annette Crumpton, who invited her to join after just one class. Since then, she has recruited more than five other women to join the troupe and has graciously taken on the role of Company Manager for the Hi-Steppers.

“After many years of working in a male-dominated profession, it is a joy to have such a lovely sisterhood” - Teri.