After nearly ten years as a Chicago Police officer, Dierdre Burrell-Hill started questioning her life’s direction. “I was asking God what is my purpose, what should I be doing,” she says. Although she was good at her job, she always felt there was something else in store.
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One afternoon in 1989, Burrell-Hill was answering 911 calls. She picked up a call from a woman who was crying hysterically. The woman said her three-month-old baby had stopped breathing. Following police procedure Burrell-Hill handed the case over to the fire department. The woman called back 15 minutes later, and out of the 17 other officers working the phones Burrell-Hill answered. The woman pleaded for help, screaming that her baby had now turned blue. Risking her job, Burrell-Hill instructed the woman on how to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After five tense minutes, the baby was breathing.
Burrell-Hill never returned to being a police officer. Instead she gives holistic health care seminars, motivational speeches, and meditation classes. This January, Essence magazine listed her as one of nine nationally recognized meditation experts, and she was recently a finalist in Les Brown’s “Speak Off,” a motivational speaking competition.
