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Outstanding women honored

Hardened criminals ordering take-out probably wouldn't want Yu Li-chuan (余麗娟), 37, to deliver it to them -- unless, of course, they were game for a blood-splattering encounter with a machine gun-toting Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team.

With a little make-up and modish attire to supplement her good looks, Yu could pass for an ordinary teenybopper -- one of her undercover identities.

A closer look, however, might reveal her no-nonsense, 1,000-yard stare and the bulging of a 9mm firearm, fully loaded, under her clothes.

And chances are, if Yu knocks on your door and announces the arrival of a pizza you didn't order, she has already canvassed your neighborhood for months working undercover; your arrest -- or death, depending on how much resistance to an entire SWAT team you deem is prudent -- is just seconds away.

"The scariest moment in my career?" Yu says, her wise, hawkish eyes scanning the room as she thinks back.

"That would have to be a raid on a gunrunner's apartment a few years back. Raids are complicated operations -- it's not like somebody high up says, `Let's do a raid,' and then a raid is staged," she says. "Raids often follow three months of electronic eavesdropping, staking out the target and careful planning."

Adrenaline surged through Yu's arteries as she rapped on the gunrunner's door -- she knew the apartment was full of firearms, she says. With a platoon of SWAT warriors at her back, a battering ram and MP-5 submachine guns with safeties off, at the ready, Yu announced the arrival of takeout food. After what seemed to her an eternity, the chain lock rattled, the door yawned open.

Yu dashed aside as the SWAT team poured into the gunrunner's loft and wrestled him down without firing a single round.

"They do the raiding, but they've got the guns and shields, and stay in back until striking," she says, referring to her more combat-oriented colleagues. "We're the people up front, and we're not armed when we knock to get the target to open his door. Talk about scary."

Ladies' awards

In a society where working women are still routinely trapped by glass ceilings, or find themselves surrounded by male colleagues, Yu is special. But she was just one example of an outstanding professional woman yesterday at the 19th biennial Golden Phoenix Awards for Ten Outstanding Young Ladies Ceremony in Taipei.

Held since 1966, the awards ceremony recognizes 10 finalists, among hundreds of nominees, who have made outstanding contributions to the national interest through public service.

This year, a panel of judges chose -- besides Yu -- star academics, a Kaohsiung firefighter who leads an all-male firefighting unit, a taekwondo champion and two artists for trophies and the honor of recognition yesterday.

Finalist Yang Shu-yi (楊淑怡), 29, put her talents on display after the ceremony, wrapping her toes around a brush and deftly painting the stunning likeness of a pink orchid. While the rest of her body was contorted and seized by shaking because of cerebral palsy, Yang's bare feet exhibited a precision of movement that would put a surgeon's hands to shame.

"We didn't think she would become as good as she has -- we just wanted to give her a hobby," said Yang's mother as she helped Yang mix her paints.

"Now she earns a regular income by selling her paintings to greeting card companies," she added, saying that Yang has been studying "foot-painting" formally since the age of 15.
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