An Eldorado transsexual has been charged with impersonating a police officer by stopping a car on Interstate 25, police say.

Randey Michelle "Mikeh" Gordon, 60, is a former male high-school art teacher in Westchester County, N.Y., who caused a stir in 2000 when she took the school year off with pay to have a sex-change operation.

Her story has been featured by the New York Daily News, Fox News and conservative Christian publications.

Gordon did not return a message to her phone in Eldorado on Tuesday.

According to the state police, a Santa Fe County grand jury last week returned an indictment against Gordon for impersonating a police officer, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and reckless driving.

State police spokesman Lt. Eric Garcia said Gordon was not arrested because the District Attorney's Office wanted to present the charges to a grand jury first. Garcia said he expects a jury trial soon will be scheduled in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court for Gordon.

Last summer, Garcia said, police heard that a "person in women's clothes who was very obviously a male" was parking a police-like vehicle along I-25, pointing a radar gun at cars and sometimes yelling at the drivers with a bullhorn.

On Aug. 13, Gordon pulled over Ralph Lew-Lee of Eldorado, whom Gordon claimed to have clocked at 105 mph, Garcia said. He said Gordon was driving a black Nissan Titan with a police decal, flashing blue emergency lights and other police equipment.

Garcia said Lew-Lee initially thought Gordon was a tribal police officer, so when he pulled over on Old Pecos Trail after taking that exit, he asked Gordon for identification and Gordon refused. Garcia said Gordon was not wearing a police officer's uniform, but was in civilian women's clothing and was armed with a Glock pistol which Gordon "grabbed" when Lew-Lee got out of his car.

A state police officer later arrived and spoke to both Lew-Lee and Gordon. Garcia said Gordon told the officer that she — "the suspect likes to be called she" — had been a police officer in White Plains, N.Y., for 18 years. However, a check with that department determined Gordon had been a volunteer in the police auxiliary there from 1979 to 1986, Garcia said.

"The reason we are taking such a serious look at this case is that we can't have a bunch of people out there doing their own thing," Garcia said. "If they want to become police officers, that's why we have academies, that's why we have programs in place for mounted patrolmen and auxiliary officers. If that's what they want to do, they can. ... But, please, allow the commissioned officers and deputies to do what they've got to do and try not to intervene."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.