Dorothy Snow-Wesley doesn't carry a gun, leap from helicopters or flirt her way to the solution of a crime like one of Charlie's Angels.
Snow-Wesley, a private investigator from New Castle, does background checks, reads depositions, conducts surveillance and tracks evidence. Most of her clients are insurance companies, corporations and law firms that want her to investigate insurance and workers' compensation fraud.
Being a female private investigator is fun, but not always glamorous. It is always hard work, often with long hours away from home and family.
"Surveillance can be long and boring," said Snow-Wesley, a former Chicago parole officer and police investigator. "But I love what I do. ... It's the mystery, solving problems, looking for answers and knowing you are doing good for the society in general."
Snow-Wesley, 58, is one of eight women who run private investigation companies in Delaware. As owner of Alpha & Omega Investigations Inc., she represents a rapidly growing part of the private investigation industry: women.
"Women are the fastest growing segment of private investigators in the United States," said Jimmie Mesis, editor in chief of PI Magazine, an industry publication with 30,000 subscribers in 20 countries.
Thirty years ago, there were only a handful of female investigators in the entire country. Today, women are penetrating the once male dominated world of the private eye. In Delaware, since 1994, the number of female private investigators who head their own companies has doubled from four to eight. The total number of private investigation firms has grown from 62 to 99.
Mesis estimates there are about 60,000 licensed private investigation companies in the country with about 40,000 employees who are not owners. He estimates 8 percent of investigators are women.
Former police officers, housewives, writers, paralegals, mystery shoppers employed by retailers and other women are increasingly finding opportunities in the industry. Mesis said women of all ages are joining the field.
"It's one of the few professions where there is no glass ceiling," said Kitty Hailey, 59, owner of Kitty Hailey Investigations in Philadelphia and author of numerous books on private investigation. "When I started there were a handful of women across the country. Now there are more and more."
It's a litigious society where workers' compensation and liability insurance claims are rampant. Terrorism has companies concerned about the safety of their workers and financial transactions. As a result, demand for private investigators is on the rise.
Private investigation is among the most rapidly growing occupations in the country, expected to increase 35 percent by 2012, according to the Department of Labor. And women are taking advantage of these opportunities.
"Fiction popularizes things - makes them sexy. But what we do changes people's lives," Hailey said. "We find dead-beat dads, find the missing child or do the work that the person on death row needs to be done to be exonerated before being killed by the state."
'A closed club'
Many of Delaware's private investigators run one- or two-person shops. About a quarter of them also run security services providing patrols and guards for local companies.
The average wage for a private investigator is $15.79 an hour or about $32,838 a year, according to the state Department of Labor. But experts say, depending on experience and type of cases handled, the salary of an established private investigator can exceed $100,000 a year.
Delaware has one of the strictest licensing laws for private investigators in the nation, requiring individuals to be at least 25 years old and have five years of law enforcement or managerial experience at a private investigation company before they can open their own company. An individual who is 21 years old can work for a licensed private investigator. Investigators licensed in other states cannot set up shop here without a Delaware license.
"It's a closed club," said Michael T. O'Rourke, 46, a private investigator in Wilmington, who handles everything from insurance claims to kidnappings and murders. "It is very tight. Everybody knows everybody."
Still, O'Rourke said it is not difficult for women to enter the field as long as they meet the state's qualifications.
For Amanda Mowle, a 24-year-old aspiring investigator from Elkton, Md., who currently works at MBNA Corp., the easiest way to gain experience was to work part time for O'Rourke.
"My ideal job would be an investigator for the current bank I work for or for the government," Mowle said. She now conducts surveillance, background checks, even profiles of jurors in criminal cases for O'Rourke.
For Mowle and some of the women who have chosen this career, there
seems to be unlimited potential for growth and independence once they are licensed.
"It's a hard area to break into," Mowle said. But she said obtaining a license allows an investigator to open her own business and be her own boss.
More than a 9-to-5 job
Caryn Gloyd, an investigator and operations manager for S&H Investigations in Newport, stumbled into the profession in the 1970s when she met, and later married, an investigator. At first, she worked mostly on insurance-related matters, but now spends most of her time overseeing on-going cases ranging from crime scene reconstructions to locating missing people and assets around the world.
"There are a lot of women, such as me, who do not have a college education," said Gloyd, 44. "We are still accepted in the field."
Gloyd said being an investigator is challenging for those who have young children. But she said it is an exciting field that has exposed her to people and parts of the world she never would have experienced working a 9-to-5 job.
For example, about four years ago Gloyd received a call from an Indian neurology student in Philadelphia who wanted to investigate his future bride's ability to pay dowry. The answer would be critical. There are hundreds of documented cases of brides murdered because they did not have the agreed dowry.
With some help with the World Investigators' Network, which Gloyd helped found, Gloyd was able to prove that the bride's family had assets in India, Belgium, Ireland, even in Zimbabwe. The wedding could take place.
"When you find the truth you are very pleased," Gloyd said.
The work is exciting
Most private investigators' assignments are not life and death cases.
A typical case handled by Snow-Wesley involves surveillance and conducting telephone pretext calls.
Often a surveillance begins as early as 5 a.m. and can last more than 10 hours. That is when you catch the individuals on workers' compensation who say they are not working but come back home from their night job. It's also a good time to discover a person's daily routine.
Snow-Wesley's company has saved insurance companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent claims. For example, she and her investigators recently caught a man who claimed he was too ill to work and had received more than $50,000 in workers' compensation claims. All the while, he was working as a construction contractor. New Jersey is currently investigating the case, using some of the evidence collected by Snow-Wesley's investigators.
Snow-Wesley, who sometimes wears disguises and drives different cars, said she can't imagine doing something more exciting than being an investigator. To her team of seven investigators, she's "Mommy Charlie."
"I do love my work. I get excited like a child just before Christmas and it has been like that since I started," she said.