When Patrice Billings retired as a police helicopter pilot nearly a decade ago, her former chief sent her a lovely note thanking her for her service and for representing the department with high standards.

Recently, she called him with an unlikely request. Billings is running as a Democrat for a state Senate seat in Missouri’s deep-red St. Charles County. She knows her former chief is a conservative, but she took a risk and called him to make her case.

“You know I’m a Republican,” he told her. But he listened to what the first-time candidate had to say.

Billings, who has lived in her district for 33 years, says it was easier to come out as gay than as a Democrat in this largely conservative community. After the last election, she decided she couldn’t stand by the sidelines any longer. She saw the state legislature failing to properly fund schools or address crises like the opioid epidemic.

“If not me, who? If not now, when?” she asked herself the familiar questions.

She’s part of a record number of women candidates running in an unexpected place -- a county where Trump won by a little more than 26 points. In this area, Republicans have run unopposed for many seats for years. That’s starting to change with these nine women, eight of whom are running for office for the first time. They are part of a national “pink wave:” Women make up 23 percent of non-incumbents running for congressional seats in 2018, compared to 16 percent in the previous two cycles. Nearly 80 percent of these women have been Democrats. Of the Democratic nominees for the U.S. House of Representatives so far, more than 40 percent are women, according to an NBC News analysis, compared with less than 10 percent of the Republican nominees.

Several of the St. Charles County candidates were recruited by Cheryl Hibbeler, whose family has deep roots in the area and who has previously held political office. She saw that a seat on the St. Charles County Council was not being contested, and decided to join the group of candidates.

“I wanted to be part of this team, and be brave with them,” she said. They come from diverse backgrounds -- they include a prosecutor, an educator, a business owner -- but they were all convinced that running for office was part of the solution to address the problems they saw.

Christine Hedges, who is also running for the county council, said she started going to marches and meetings after the last election and came to a realization: “Nothing was going to change unless we elect people to office who are going to change things.”

She said she didn’t even know there were other Democrats in St. Charles County.

“I thought I was the only one,” she said.

Jill Aul, who is president of the Ethical Society Mid Rivers, understands the feeling of being what she calls “a blueberry in a tomato soup.”

“It’s very isolating,” she said. It may not feel safe to reveal your political beliefs until you are sure of who you are talking to -- although this last election has brought Democrats out of the woodwork, according to Morton Todd, chairman of the St. Charles Democratic Central Committee.

Aul said she is amazed by the bravery of the women campaigning against the odds, often at a tremendous fundraising disadvantage.

“I’m just overwhelmed with joy and hope,” she said. “Of course, I want them all to win, but just the fact that they are running is thrilling and exciting and hopeful.”

Some of the candidates, like Katy Geppert, running for U.S. Congress in Missouri’s 3rd district, recognize the David-and-Goliath nature of their fight. She works full-time in a STEM field, has a 2-year-old daughter and found out she was pregnant after she decided to run. She and her husband discussed what it would mean for her to be campaigning during her pregnancy and with a newborn.

“We just decided we can do it,” she said. “We can figure it out. The consequences of inaction were so much greater than getting involved.” When she is out visiting farmers markets and attending school board meetings, other women will whisper to ask her if she’s running as a Democrat. Several have quietly said they are glad to have an option.

Lorna Frahm, who is running for county executive, pointed out that the entire council is white Republican men older than 50, while more than half of the county is female.

“My candidacy is already a win for democracy,” she said.

Billings, who had called to ask her former boss for his support, asked him if he would consider voting for someone who had integrity and the character and values he wanted in a candidate -- even if she didn’t share his party affiliation.

He ended up making a donation to her campaign.

A handwritten note on festive stationery arrived in my work mail recently.

The message was framed with a border of silver and gold curlicue ribbons:

“You are a (expletive) (slur) from hell,” the letter began. “It’s obvious you do not like the United States and it’s obvious you hate Donald Trump. I’m so grateful he won, because Hillary, like you, is a (expletive) (slur). Please move to a muslim country where you will be forced to wear a Burka and your husband has the right to beat you. Have a nice day, you (expletive) (slur)!”

Well, that’s not very festive.

A less profane interaction recently kicked off a national discussion on civility. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Lexington, Virginia, restaurant by its owner because of her public role in defending President Donald Trump. Prior to that, late night comedian Samantha Bee apologized after calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless” version of the slur my dear reader used.

Having written publically for a couple of decades, I’m used to readers who angrily disagree with things I’ve published. Very angrily. It’s part of the territory for most journalists, especially those who write columns.

But there’s been a shift in the angriest responses during the past two years.

The tenor and tone of my hate mail changed with the rise of Trump. I began to notice a turn during his candidacy. His supporters sent vitriolic messages that were also divorced from reality. They did not believe a single mainstream news report about his actions or words, regardless of the evidence, if it revealed something negative.

For the first time in my 20 years of journalism, some news readers were saying that journalists should not be protected by the First Amendment. Perhaps this level of hostility toward a free press existed prior to Trump’s chants of “fake news,” but I had never before heard Americans calling for a repeal of our most foundational freedom.

After his election, whenever I’ve criticized a policy or action of this administration, the rebuttal from some of his supporters inevitably includes a dose of bigotry, attacking my religion or ethnicity.

To be sure, insults and threats from a minority of readers have always been part of my inbox. But this added flourish of bigotry is new. Perhaps those who always felt that way are more comfortable expressing it now. Surprisingly, it’s not limited to the “economically anxious” or “poorly educated,” as Trump has described some of his voters. I’ve received racist emails from an attorney, who initially shared such views from a work account.

I do wonder if these letter writers got worked up about Sanders being asked to leave a restaurant.

I showed my teenage daughter this recent note. I’ve never shared my hate mail with her before, but she’s old enough to know the depth to which public discourse has sunk. On one level, I wanted to prepare her for what I hope she never encounters in the world, but very well might. More importantly, I wanted her to see I was unaffected by this person’s hate.

These words didn’t hurt me, nor would they stop me from speaking about what I feel is important. If anything, I felt sorry for anyone walking around with that kind of toxic anger and no better way to express or deal with it.

My daughter read the letter silently.

“Cowards,” she said, finally. People who send anonymous messages like that are just cowards, she told me.

That’s true, I agreed. I’ve told my children that you should always be able to sign your name to whatever you write.

It’s how civilized people behave.

Some parenting mistakes are part of a recurring pattern or habit, like failing to be consistent or losing one’s temper. We’ve all been there, and often more than once. But other missteps make such an impression, you learn never to repeat them.

This was one of those, and it began with the best of intentions.

Early in my parenthood, I wanted to take a last-minute trip to visit my family in Texas. Maybe it was a special occasion or maybe I just missed having someone take care of me at a moment when all my energy was spent taking care of two small children.

My daughter was a toddler, around 3 years old, and my son was almost a year old. I don’t remember their exact ages, but I distinctly recall the air-travel accoutrements required: a car seat, a double stroller, a stocked diaper bag, a purse and checked luggage.

Traveling with children can be challenging under the best circumstances, like when you have an equal adult-to-baby ratio. It’s even harder when you are outnumbered, and my husband couldn’t join me on this trip. However, I have a habit of convincing myself that an ambitious plan I’ve hatched won’t be nearly as difficult as it sounds.

I am always wrong about this.

This particular trip would take place during my unpaid maternity leave, when I had the luxury of time, but a tight budget. I looked up the cost of two tickets, since our youngest could fly as a lap baby.

Yikes. The airfare was pricey -- an unjustifiable expense during an unpaid leave. My husband told me to just buy the tickets. I ignored this suggestion.

Ever the deal-hunter, I convinced myself that I could get a better price through one of the discount travel sites. I mean, how bad could it be? (Note to self: Anytime you have to ask yourself that question, the answer is, “pretty bad.”)

I bid on two tickets and scored the flights for significantly less than what I would have paid through the airline. I felt quite savvy about these savings. We can call this the metaphoric pride before the fall.

The St. Louis-to-Houston flight is normally an hour and 45 minutes. But this low-budget itinerary was going to take more than six hours, with a connection and a two-hour layover as an added bonus. That didn’t sound like a great plan for a three-day visit while traveling solo with two babies, but there were no take-backs in this travel gamble.

So, off we went.

The first plane was one of those 50-seater express jets, which I’ll never forget because it provoked severe ear pain in both children upon the descent. I tried to nurse the baby while consoling a crying toddler. The flight attendant asked if I wanted to give my daughter a piece of gum. I had already tried gum, gummy bears, ice and juice, but nothing worked.

When we finally deplaned, the kids were already worn out. I was carrying one child, pushing the other in a stroller, and trying to balance an oversized diaper bag on the handles with a massive purse hanging off my shoulder.

I remember the pitying looks from other travelers.

We wandered around the Charlotte airport, found something to eat, and I tried to keep them awake through their nap times so they would fall asleep on the next flight. That was the latest in a series of bad ideas. My daughter, now a teenager, swears she remembers wondering why we were stuck at the airport and getting on another plane that would hurt her ears. By the time we finally landed in Houston, I had a severe migraine and called my husband to say that I considered it a victory that I was stone-cold sober and still had both our children.

The idea of going through that all over again in two days to go home made me feel dizzy. At my parents’ house, I bought two tickets for a direct flight back home after our stay. And yes, the purchase price included a free spousal I-told-you-so.

For the next decade, I never took another connecting flight with our children.

I had already learned an expensive lesson about cheap flights.