How a former Catholic nun became one of the first female FBI agents in history - VIDEO

Joanne Pierce Misko tells of how she went from being a nun to catching fugitives

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Joanne Pierce Misko

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Then in 1973 she was sent to Wounded Knee, South Dakota where she pulled 12-hour days for almost two months during the American Indian Movement siege.

“At the time it’s going on you don’t think about it,” she said. “But afterwards, when you go back, you think, ‘My God, what could have happened?’”

The former nun was later appointed to the Pittsburgh Division, where she met her husband Michael Misko.

She went on to become the one of the first female supervisors at FBI Headquarters, where she headed up the unit for new agent applications.

“This was one of the most rewarding things that I did. I brought people in and took them through the testing process and then the interview process and through the physical tests that they had to go through. And you felt so great when they were able to succeed and actually received an appointment as a special agent. So that was a really rewarding thing that I did.”

After working as an agent for 22 years, she retired from the FBI in 1994. She later worked as an audit investigator for a major bank. She remains close to many of her agents still today.

“The hardest thing about leaving the Bureau is leaving the people,” she said. “The FBI is a family and you get very, very close and you feel part of an organization and part of that group. It was a privilege, really, and it was a wonderful career.”

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