Most of the buzz about Netflix's latest miniseries Griselda is about Sofía Vergara's stunning transformation into the drug queenpin. However, the series about the notorious female crime boss is really a story of determined women on each side of the law. Among the detectives hunting Blanco down, there was June Hawkins (portrayed Juliana Aidén Martinez), one of the first female homicide detectives in Miami. From executive producer Vergara and the team behind Narcos, Griselda depicts in tandem the true stories of Blanco's rise and Hawkins' investigation to bring the ruthless killer to justice. Unlike the infamous "madrina," the detective's story didn't become the stuff of legend. There isn't even a Wikipedia page on Hawkins as of the day of Griselda's Jan 25 premiere.
Per Griselda co-creator and co-showrunner Doug Miro, it took 18 months of research for the show's creative team to piece together that Hawkins was an integral part of Blanco's capture and later conviction. The former detective, now in her 70s, ended up consulting on the show, providing details of her early career and the investigation for the series' scripts, as she became the focus of the show's cop storyline. “It was amazing, that we’re doing the first show about a [female] narco and it was a female cop who discovered her presence in Miami—who pieced together the size of her organization, who understood and recognized what she was doing on the ground,” he told Vanity Fair.
