1974 alumna recalls her life as a PI

Maria Consuelo “Connie” Acosta has a reputation for being intrepid and resourceful. The one-time FIU student of sociology and anthropology made a career of investigative work by adapting the knowledge and skills she learned as an undergraduate: observing behavior and examining cultural background in order to ask the right questions and draw conclusions. And she utilized her facility with languages – English and Spanish fluency with some French, Italian and Portuguese – to connect with a variety of clients and witnesses from all walks of life.

When she arrived on campus in 1972, on FIU’s opening day, Acosta saw little more than an old air traffic control tower (a leftover from the airport on which the university was built), the PC building and lots of undeveloped land.

With every opportunity available to her at the brand-new institution, she wasted no time in blazing a trail. She started a campus newsletter with a fellow student. She performed traditional Colombian dances at events hosted by the International Student Organization, a nod to her Colombian roots before moving to the United States at age two. She traveled to the Dominican Republic and Haiti with her Caribbean studies class, where she attended a voodoo ceremony and swam “in the pool at night with bats flying overhead.” Yet the pièce de résistance was a fellowship opportunity that had her journey to the internationally renowned Mayan research center Casa Na Bolom (“House of the Jaguar”) in southernmost Mexico. Here, she worked with a pioneering environmentalist and her archeologist husband who mapped the Lacandon jungle, where a group of Maya retreated during the Spanish conquest and continue to reside.

Following graduation, Acosta cut her teeth working for renowned maritime attorney William “Bill” Huggett, who often represented injured crew members. When ship owners and operators failed to provide legally mandated protections for their crew, Huggett put Acosta on the trail.

And she dove in, literally. By rummaging through the curbside trash bins of these dodgy ships that were circumventing U.S. regulations, Acosta often found the necessary evidence—regulatory documentation that enabled her next steps. She then served numerous “complaints” and subpoenas to these ship owners and operators. Not one to leave a job unfinished, Acosta traveled unaccompanied — despite dangerous military conflicts — to Central and South America, where many of these crew members hailed from, to ferry them and additional witnesses back to Miami for federal trial.

Wanting to learn more about criminal investigations, Acosta started working with a retired Miami-Dade homicide detective. Then, in 1981, she opened AAA Investigative Services, Inc., the first and, at the time, only female-run investigative agency in Miami. The next eight years feature moments both thrilling and perilous.

One success story involves Acosta obtaining statements from no fewer than 13 witnesses for a client who had previously hired two ex-cops for the job. She accomplished in one day what the two men failed to achieve over the course of six months. As Acosta tells it, she understood how to read people and disarm them.

Her victories flew in the face of what many, at the time, thought of enterprising women: not much. “I never met another female investigator,” she recalls. “They were all men, and men [didn’t] think women [could] do this job.” Yet she developed an approach that worked to her advantage and ultimately got others to cooperate with her. “If you treat people with respect,” she says of her modus operandi, “they’re going to respect you.”

Still, it was the 1980s, and “Miami was the wild, wild west,” Acosta explains.

When her line of work became too risky – she recalls being chased by an incensed individual with a bat – she shuttered her agency and moved to Pittsburgh.

Acosta was hired as a professional investigator with the Public Defender’s Office of Allegheny County, eventually retiring in 2017 from the Pittsburgh office before returning to Miami.

Acosta has traversed twists and turns with an unwavering dedication to her mission and a sense of humor. Contemplating her personal and professional trajectory, she credits her alma mater for helping her.

“I am very grateful to FIU for preparing and guiding me on the path of my life’s work.”