| abstract | - Lucia "Lucky Lucy" Soto (b. 1986) is a native of Los Angeles, a second-generation Mexican-American and speaks both English and Spanish fluently. She was born in the Westlake area. Her family moved to Pacoima after 1993. In that year Soto survived an apartment fire in a building on Bonnie Brae Street in which five other children died from smoke inhalation. After high school she attended Mills College in Oakland, originally intending to pursue a law degree. After graduation her interest changed to law enforcement. In 2009 she joined the Los Angeles Police Department. By this time she was living in Redondo Beach. Early in her career she was involved in a shootout with four armed robbers during a liquor store holdup. Her partner (unnamed) was killed. Soto killed two of the robbers and held the other two until SWAT arrived. Another detective, Ali Karim, assisted her in the aftermath. As is usual with officer-involved shooting cases, she was assigned to counseling and visited Dr. Hinojos weekly. She was awarded the Medal of Valor for her actions and subsequently promoted to Detective in the Open-Unsolved Unit after only five years on the force. She was partnered with detective Harry Bosch because of his long experience. It was the Chief's decision to put these two detectives together. Like Bosch's former partner, she prefers O-U cases because there usually isn't a dead body to look at. However, in 2014 her third case with Bosch was the murder of Orlando Merced. It was a cold case because Merced had been shot ten years earlier, but he did not die until 2014. An autopsy recovered the bullet which was lodged in his spine. Because Merced was also Mexican-American and a friend of former Mayor Armando Zeyas, Soto got a quick immersion into L.A. politics. Zeyas offered a reward of $50,000 which caused a flood of calls, most of them bogus. They began interviewing the other members of Merced's mariachi band and discovered that Angel Ojeda had left L.A. abruptly after the shooting. They found him in Tulsa, OK, and learned that he had a brief affair with the wife of Charles Broussard. While working on the Merced case she also freelanced on the Bonnie Brae arson case which had never been cleared. She and Bosch started working on it together at the same time as the Merced case. When Bosch uncovered a link between the fire and a nearby armed robbery on the same day, their investigation began to focus on the major players in the robbery case, which was also never cleared. After several false leads, they focused on an employee of the bank who had assisted the robbers. After the fire and robbery she joined a convent in Calexico and donated a large sum of money. Soto and Bosch ultimately concluded that the robbers had caused the fire to distract police, but they had both been killed in 1997. With Ojeda testimony, Soto and Bosch became convinced that he had been the real target of the shooting and that Broussard was behind it. While searching the former home of David Willman, Soto noticed a hiding place that turned out to contain the murder weapon. They attempted unsuccessfully to draw out Mrs. Broussard whom they erroneously believed had made anonymous phone calls to the tip line. Upon arriving at the Broussard home they observed Mr. Broussard beating the maid. Soto shot him twice in the back, killing him. Two weeks later, Dr. Hinojos gave Soto the okay to return to active duty. After Bosch's retirement she was partnered with Stanley "the Steamer" O'Shaughnessy. It is not a good partnership and it was done partially to punish Soto for having been Bosch's partner. Nevertheless, she continues to do her best as an investigator. In 2015 she was contacted by Bosch asking for a favor. She looked up the murder of James Allen and provided Bosch with the info from the murder journal. She also told Bosch that Allen was the second victim to be dumped in that alley in 14 months. There were no suspects in either case. Later she obtained more information about the Allen murder from detective Ali Karim who she knew from the 2009 shootout.
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