Hélène Mank

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Hélène ({{#invoke:IPAc-en|main}}; French: [e.lɛn];) Mank (b. 1988) is a patrol deputy with the St. Charles Parish Sheriff's Office, who first meets Case Garland while responding to his report of aggravated assault. She has spent her entire life in the parish, and has been a police officer for over eight years. As one of the few women and one of the few African Americans on the police force in St. Charles, she is constantly forced to achieve perfection in order to avoid being criticized.

Biography

Early life

Hélène was born in Boutte, Louisiana, to Beulah (nee Hardy) and Antoine Mank. Her was a teacher in New Orleans, while her father owned a lawn and landscaping business. When Hélène was two, her mother helped lead a three-week teacher's strike against the New Orleans Public School system. Hélène spent much of those three weeks on the picket line with her mother.

They led a relatively simple life until Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005. In the aftermath of the storm and the flooding in New Orleans, Beulah lost her teaching job. Antoine's business, however, picked up substantially as people sought to both clean their properties and make them more resilient to storms and flooding. Despite working long hours to help her father keep up with all the jobs that spring, Hélène graduated cum laude in May 2006.

Intending to take over her father's business, Hélène continued working full-time with him while enrolling at Southeastern Louisiana University to study Business Administration. She graduated in 2010, this time Magna Cum Laude.

Professional life

Hélène spent the next two years working with her father with the dream of expanding his business by adding a nursery and garden store. To gain experience running a store, Hélène begin working at JR Feed & Seed in Dutchtown. One weekend, as she was closing up the shop, two men forced their way in and demanded the money from the registers. Although Hélène kept her cool, her co-worker, a high school senior, panicked and screamed. One of the men shot the girl point-blank in the chest; the other, startled, fired his gun too, hitting Hélène in the lower torso. The bullet grazed her liver. During her recovery, Hélène decided to become a police officer.

Hélène took a job as a corrections deputy to gain experience and soon enrolled in the POST certification program. After the year-long program, she spent two more years in the correctional system before getting a job as a patrol deputy. When hired, she was not the only African American on the force, nor was she the only woman on the force. She was, however, the only African American woman on the force. As had been true throughout her life, and just as her father had told her, she needed to constantly achieve perfection simply to be seen as not incompetent. She spent most of her free time during her first year on patrol reading ever legal statute in St. Charles Parish and in the state of Louisiana. In her three years on patrol, she has received neither remprimand nor commendation.

She still lives in the house she grew up in with her parents who continue to run Antoine's Landscaping.

Relationships

Hélène dated little in high school, focusing on her studies and eventually her work with her father. In college, she continued to focus her energies on school and work, but she did date another Business major, Randy Jenkins, during her sophomore year, and an Art major, Zachary Underwood, during junior and senior year. She has avoided relationships since becoming a deputy, uncomfortable with the idea of dating someone she might have to arrest. Before the pandemic, she would venture out to New Orleans with friends for the occasional fling.

Case Garland

Case's status as an outsider appeals to Hélène's discomfort with dating within the parish. His seeming ability to not care what other people think is also appealing to her.