Funeral services were being held Wednesday on Long Island for retired NYPD Officer Karen Hill, who died March 11 at 58 after a 10-year battle with 9/11-related cancer.
Born in Brooklyn, Hill followed her dream of becoming a police officer and was still a recruit when she got the call to respond to Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Her class was the first and I believe the only class to go into active duty before they even graduated,” her daughter, Quadina Hill, told 1010 WINS.
Quadina Hill was just 15 years old at the time. She said her mom worked at the Pile for two months, sleeping on the floor many nights at the police academy, especially in the first couple weeks of the deployment.
“Literally two weeks I didn’t see her,” she said. “It was dire, it was like all-hands-on-deck.”
Shaped by the 9/11 response, Hill went on to have an NYPD career at several police precincts in Queens, all while taking care of her two daughters.
“She really enjoyed being a cop,” Quadina Hill said. “It’s something that she always wanted to do, so she really accelerated.”
And then came her courageous battle with breast cancer. Her daughter said she was very brave both as an officer and in her fight against cancer.
“It was really sad, the deterioration was really, really sad, and to know that all of this happened because of something that happened so long ago,” she said. “The funny person that she was didn’t deserve to go out like that.”
She said her mom’s response to 9/11 was “a very powerful moment in her life.”
“We feel like she gave her life to something that’s very important, and she told me she would do it all over again,” she said.
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@glennschuck reports
📸 Courtesy of the Hill Family, Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
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