Biographical Information for Sheila L. Stephens
E-mail: slstephens@mindspring.com
Cell phone: 205-835-2213

Sheila L. Stephens was the first female Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) special agent in the state of Alabama—one of the first in the nation. Recruited by ATF while a police officer in Mountain Brook, Alabama, she has a unique platform from which to write and speak about the people and issues of law enforcement.

Stephens is a graduate of The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the Alabama State Trooper Academy and the University of Alabama, holding degrees in Deaf Education and in Criminal Justice. In September 2007, she graduates from Boston University with a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice.

While a special agent with ATF, she was a member of the National Response Team, a select group of first responders to arson and explosives scenes. Also chosen as a representative to the multi-agency, multi-state offensive against a deadly white supremacy group in Arkansas, she participated as a member of the entry team, the search team and the select interview team.

She holds certificates in the areas of Education, Interviewing/Interrogation, Hypnosis, and Street Survival. She has taught at the Birmingham Police Academy, and has been the owner/operator of a security and private investigative agency specializing in hidden camera technology for police departments, businesses, and the monitoring of care-givers. She is presently a Criminal Justice professor at the fully accredited, online, Andrew Jackson University.

While on injury leave from ATF, she was poisoned with arsenic and mercury. Although not expected to recover, she continued to write and study. Because of this, the director and organizers of the Yosemite Writer’s Conference created a scholarship in her name. The scholarship rewards excellence of artistic talent as well as perseverance in the face of adversity.

At the August 2004 conference, the first Sheila L. Stephens Scholarship was awarded by Stephens herself. In the year 2005, she returned to the Yosemite Conference as a presenter, sharing the same information on law enforcement issues that she presents at organizations and conferences around the country. She recently presented The “CSI Effect” on Crime Labs at the New England School of Law, and wrote an article that appears in their Law Review. Her first book, a text about the history, use and future of weapons is scheduled to be released by Writer’s Digest Books in early 2009.

Prevented from returning to ATF by her injury, Stephens has incorporated her private investigation/security business and is working on a non-profit division. A popular speaker on literacy, and an advocate for mandatory heavy metals testing at yearly physicals and in emergency rooms, she is also a contributing writer and Associate Editor of The Agent, the newsletter of the National Association of Federal Agents (NAFA). Finally, she is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America and the author’s and speakers’ association, The Crime Lab Project.

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