Sonja Hurtado doesn't hold back when someone asks her if becoming a Honolulu police officer was difficult — especially when it comes to describing the physical training and her three trips to a nearby emergency room.

Anyone can make the cut, Hurtado will tell the other soccer moms when she's at a game with one of her three children or the parents she sees at school. Hurtado considers herself living proof.

"It's all about your willpower," she said. "They think they have to look or be physically fit, but they build you up to that point, to be able to run a mile and a half and to be able to fight for two minutes without dying."

The 36-year-old Hurtado is as tough and as fit as they come.

She joined the department after eight years in the Navy and her military background left her in good shape. Although she worked in information technology, Hurtado trained alongside Navy divers at Pearl Harbor, running, swimming and dragging sandbags.

But when she arrived at the police department's Waipahu training center in May 2006, she was suffering from a bad shoulder that she injured during a tug-of-war contest organized by the divers: "I got yanked through the air and my shoulder got yanked out when I hit the ground," she said.

At the training academy, she did push-ups with gritted teeth.

"I would go to the emergency room and come right back," she said. "The major at the academy said, 'Hurtado, you got spunk.' "

Law enforcement was a family calling for the former resident of Manhattan, N.Y. Her father and grandfather were cops. Several cousins, too, including one who is a police chief and another who was an FBI agent.

She grew up equal parts protector and prankster. Sometimes she brawled with the other kids in school when someone picked on her sister; then there was the time she handcuffed her sister to a couch with her father's department-issue restraints.

Currently, Hurtado works at the receiving desk of the Kapolei station.

A former bodybuilder and softball player, she trains whenever she can, running and lifting weights almost every day. She recently looked into a karate class.

"My husband always says being a police officer, I have to be strong," said Hurtado, a record-setting cross-country runner in high school.

But finding enough time is always difficult. Some days, Hurtado works out at home in between doing loads of laundry.

And that banged-up shoulder, the one that makes a popping noise anyone can hear when she rotates it? Even in pain, it still inspires potential recruits.

"I will say, I went through the whole time with my shoulder all screwed up," Hurtado said. "I did it with a messed-up shoulder, so anyone who has no background in physical training or working out, they can do it."

Occasionally someone asks her if she ever thought about quitting. Her response is swift.

"That isn't in my vocabulary."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.