'Most People Think All You Do Is Protect The President, You Do All These Other Things': Former Secret Service Agent Evy Poumpouras On Book 'Becoming Bulletproof'
(CBS Local)-- Former Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras spent her life in law enforcement protecting some of the most important and influential people of the last 20 years.
Poumpouras spent 12 years of her life as a special agent for the Secret Service and was on the Presidential Protective Division for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. In addition to her law enforcement background, Poumpouras has two Master's Degrees in Forensic Psychology and another one in Journalism. The former special agent wrote all about her fascinating life in a book called "Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, and Live Fearlessly."
"I wanted to write something that shares everything I learned," said Poumpouras in an interview with CBS Local's DJ Sixsmith. "I was really fortunate to go through all these different academies and be around all these brilliant and resilient people. Becoming Bulletproof is really three books in one book. It's your life manual. When I wrote the book, I didn't want to talk about in theory. You're going to read this book and you can use the stuff in it the very next day. It's 20 years in the making."
FULL INTERVIEW:
While Poumpouras spent so much of her law enforcement career protecting and interrogating people, her self care and mental health was always her number one priority.
"The one thing that we learned in training is that you have to protect yourself first and take care of yourself first," said Poumpouras. "If I'm not strong, if I'm not healthy, if I'm not well, I'm good to no one else. Ironically, you're taught to protect other people, but if you're not strong and you're not protecting you, you're going to be a complete mess."
The former Secret Service agent is now working in the television and media industry and got the chance to be a judge on Bravo's "Spy Games," where contestants competed for $100,000 as they spied on each other. Poumpouras was happy to have the opportunity to use the show and this book to demonstrate that there were many different layers to her job.
"Most people think all you do is protect the president," said Poumpouras. "I think that is the most misleading thing. To get to the president's detail, there's an internal selection process you have to go through and not everyone gets that. You don't get to that point until many years later in your career if you even get to that point. The Secret Service is a dual mission agency and they work investigations and crimes and you're doing search warrants and arrest warrants. I think that surprises people."
Watch all of DJ Sixsmith's interviews from "The Sit-Down" series here.
