Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), who served as the grand marshal of Orlando’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, waves to the crowd earlier this month, as the Senate impeachment trial was about to begin. (Willie J. Allen Jr./for The Washington Post)

Florida Congresswoman Valdez Venita Butler, the seventh child of James and Elouise, has risen from her coveted role as a sixth-grader safety patrol leader to U.S. representative of Florida’s 10th Congressional District. Ellen McCarthy profiles Demings for the Washington Post.

“And let me tell you something,” Demings said in her McCarthy interview. “When they gave me that badge and my belt, I was trying to tell everybody what to do.”

In December, when the House Judiciary Committee debated the articles of impeachment against the president, Demings began her turn at the mic by talking about herself. “I believe that only in America can a little black girl, the daughter of a maid and a janitor, growing up in the South in the ’60s, have such an amazing opportunity,” she said then, talking about her election to Congress. “No one,” she added, “can make me give up on America.”

AOC also recently profiled Congresswoman Demings, including the fact that Democratic Presidential contender Michael Bloomberg has backed her political career. With a resolve that echoes that of Stacey Abrams, Demings recalls that she and her six siblings had “the perfect life” with a cleaning woman mom who frequently hopped on “her soapbox” telling them they could do anything they wanted.

“How do we get here?” Demings challenged. Having a life “like this [white] family, like these children? It’s impossible.” But her mom “would not at all entertain that kind of talk,” she says. Stay focused, Demings’s mother would say. Study hard.

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