When Sarah Beckstrom joined the National Guard a few days after she graduated high school, she planned to use the service to pay for college. She saw the military as a steppingstone, not a lifelong career.

“She just really was more intrigued by the FBI, with how they work in their mind and their purpose of why they do it, how they got there,” Adam Carr, her former boyfriend, said. “She really wanted to do criminal justice.”

Beckstrom was nervous when she got orders to go to D.C. in August as part of President Donald Trump’s order to address local crime, Mr. Carr said. She hadn’t lived outside of rural West Virginia since she was very young, and she worried about leaving her family.

Almost as soon as she made it to the nation’s capital, though, Beckstrom, 20, realized she liked it, Mr. C

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