Family marks first 9/11 without their NYPD officer mother: "Strongest person I know"

The family of the late NYPD Officer Karen Selena Hill is marking its first 9/11 without her, 25 years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. 

Hill was one of 793 recruits to graduate from the NYPD Academy class that was still in training on 9/11. 

They started training in July 2001, and on September 11, 2001, the class was the first in NYPD history to be pushed into active duty before graduating.

Photos show Hill was all smiles that summer, making new friends in the academy. Quadina Hill, the oldest of her two daughters,  says her mother was nearing age 35, the cutoff at the time to become a police officer. This was her last chance to become one.

 "She was going to be a nurse. She was one class away," Quadina said. "And then she got the call from the police academy."

Quadina Hill and her younger sister, Sabrina Levy, say that growing up, their mom witnessed drug addiction, domestic violence and gave birth to Quadina Hill as a teen. Years later, at 4 years old, Quadina Hill battled leukemia. She says her mother's determination to see her survive transcended to her career as an officer.

"She said failure is not an option," Quadina Hill said. "If someone had a problem, she wanted to be that person that you can call on."

On Sept. 11, 2001, Quadina Hill was a student at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens Village.

"You could just see smoke in the air. Mom didn't come home," Quadina Hill said.

Karen Selena Hill had been sent to the pile. NYPD documents say she assisted in recovery from Sept. 11, 2001, through January 2002 at the World Trade Center site.

"They were doing everything from directing traffic, sorting through body parts," Quadina Hill said.

The graduation for the 9/11 academy class was delayed until March 2002.  

It was a few years later that Karen Selena Hill's younger daughter, Sabrina Levy, was born.

"She told me about some of the people that got cancer from 9/11 and then died from it," said Levy.

Fifteen years after 9/11, Karen Selena Hill reported a lump to her doctor. There was no history of cancer in her family, and she was diagnosed with 9/11-related breast cancer.

She retired from the 111th NYPD Precinct in Bayside in 2016.

At some point, her daughters say she was in remission, and the family traveled the world.

But then in 2022, they learned the cancer spread to her spine, and in 2025 to her brain and neck.

While retired and in treatment, Karen Selena Hill earned her bachelor's degree, her daughters say.

"Strongest person I know, honestly, mentally and emotionally," Quadina Hill said.

Hill died in March of this year. 

The Police Benevolent Association said she's one of six members of the academy class who have died from 9/11-related illness.

CBS News New York's Lisa Rozner asked the daughters what 9/11 means to them.

"Sad honestly, because I didn't think it was going to be that impactful because I wasn't really alive, so I didn't really know a lot of stuff that happened, but it's really like I don't know how to say it, but it's kind of surreal that that event had a major impact on my life even though I wasn't here for it," said a tearful Levy.

"I asked her, 'Would you have done this again?' And she said yes she would. She just would have started living a lot sooner," Quadina Hill added.

Quadina Hill wears a necklace in the shape of her mother's badge as a constant reminder of her sacrifice.

"At a time when many would have stepped away, our mother stepped forward," Quadina Hill wrote on a page she created to raise funds to help pay for the family's mortgage and expenses. "She was proud to be part of something bigger than herself – something meaningful, something that mattered." 

The NYPD says 127 of the 793 graduates of the 9/11 academy class are still active on the force today.