Nothing about the childhood of Claire Donovan was remotely special. Her parents supported a very working class lifestyle and never lived beyond their means. Joe, her father, started up an outdoor sporting store when his daughter was very young. He put everything he had into the business that still remains moderately successful today. Christine's mother Mary was an elementary school teacher, though she struggled with every woman's worst fear: breast cancer. It had been an ongoing battle for years and would eventually take her life when Christine was just six years old. To this day, she has very few memories of her mother though she quietly treasures the ones that remain.
Her father was distraught and completely lost when it came to raising her. By no fault of his own, he treated her more as if she were a boy than a girl, creating this tomboy image that got her teased by other children every now and then. It hardly bothered her because she enjoyed the time she had with her dad. She clung to him in ways that he didn't know how to handle with her mother out of the picture. Maybe she was just scared of losing him too. That would be an issue best left to a therapist that she'd refuse to go to.
In school, she didn't surround herself with a ton of friends like most kids. She kept a few close and that was all she was convinced she need. In her spare time, when she wasn't participating in sports or other activities, she helped her father out at the shop and learned herself the ins and outs of everything they sold. That included weapons and artillery. Joe was a military veteran who was part of special forces. He was highly trained in different skills that he passed on to his daughter for no real other reason than the bonding experience it provided.
After she graduated, she took some criminal justice classes at a local college before enrolling in the Massachusetts State Police Academy. Claire was one of their most promising recruits, boasting high marks in all categories and easily sitting atop of her class. She was first sworn in to highway patrol and eventually worked her way into a Detective position with the Narcotics division where she thrived.
It was easy for someone like her to become addicted to running cases and catching criminals, though perhaps working in that particular field wouldn't do her any favors. For as long as she could remember her father had problems with alcoholism. He was never the destructive type, though things seemed to only get worse after her mother passed. As she got older, she started to see that same pattern in herself, always shrugging it off. She was very conscious of not allowing it to be a problem and the reality was she was nowhere near as bad as her dad.
Unfortunately, a past discretion landed her in some hot water. She'd gone out to drink with some colleagues and ended up getting in a major accident when she attempted to drive home. The injuries she sustained were enough to put her in the hospital for weeks and earn her an indefinite suspension. Higher ups knew about her habits. She was essentially coerced into a lengthy sabbatical where she was mandated to attend meetings and get her life back on track. For work, she helped out her father at his gun range. She says work, though it was an obvious ploy just to keep herself busy.
In the spring of 2015 she was allowed to ease her way back onto the force. A lot of people disagreed with her captain's decision. They believed that she shouldn't be allowed all the leeway and chances she'd been given. Claire not only had to prove to herself that she could do it, but to everyone else as well. Since then, she's been relatively low key. However, she has managed to rebuild that name for herself as a real asset to law enforcement. She knows it's exactly where she belongs and she doesn't plan to do anything to jeopardize that.
