Lanier’s son, Tony, 26, a college graduate, works in an office supply store and left home two years ago to move in with his girlfriend. “I said to him, ‘Aren’t you embarrassed to live with Mom?’ Nope. He’s laid-back. A very smart kid. [But] he doesn’t have my work ethic,” Lanier says. Few do: Lanier often returns home at 9:30 pm, only to spend two hours answering e-mail and returning calls. Then there is the self-imposed homework: “I spend hours reading, staying up, looking over talking points. If I say one thing wrong, if I don’t have an answer to a question, I’ll look like an idiot.”
As a city official, the chief must reside in D.C., so she bought a town house in the Northeast area, near Trinidad. She still owns the five-acre home she bought in Anne Arundel County with her boyfriend of 10 years, D.C. police sergeant James Michael Schaefer, who lives there full-time, helping to care for Lanier’s mother and the five dogs Lanier has taken in. He often drops by her town house if he’s working late, she says. “And some days I can get out at five or six o’clock, and we can go get dinner.” She says Schaefer has taken her appointment to top cop in stride. “We’ve been together so long, he’s not at all bothered . . . Actually, we’re doing really well,” she says, sounding a bit surprised.
