Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton spoke of waking up with a drunk man urinating on her sleeping bag and being so hungry she started eating from the rubbish bin at a hot dog stand as people looked in disgust. She was left homeless in Newport, South Wales, after the death of her father. Cohen-Hatton told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs: “It wasn’t long before my 16th birthday and there were some really, really dark, difficult times.
“And I tried really hard to hide it because I really didn’t much fancy going into care.
“So I carried on going to school and in fact one of my teachers saw me selling the Big Issue.
“He made eye contact, then put his head down and crossed the road to avoid me and I kind of knew at that point nobody actually cared.”
Despite her rough teenage years, she saved enough money for a deposit on a flat, got her GCSEs and applied to 31 different fire services before joining the squad in South Wales at 18.
However, being a 5ft 1in woman proved too much for some of her colleagues.
They called her names and expressed their distaste at females being allowed to join. She said: “I was the first woman in my station, the first woman in my division.
“In the early days of my career it wasn’t brilliant. In my first six months I wasn’t even allowed my own name, they called me something really derogatory.
“They made no secret of the fact they didn’t think it was a job for women.”
Sabrina, 36, went on to have a hugely successful career in the fire service at the same time as gaining a Phd focusing on the psychology of decision making for firefighters.
She is now deputy chief fire officer in West Sussex.
Her research has gone on to influence policy and she talks to fire brigades around the world. She has also written a memoir, The Heat Of The Moment.
She was inspired to study the subject when she was on her way to a fire scene and thought her hus-band and fellow firefighter Mike had been badly burnt.
Sabrina’s discs included Anarchy In The UK by the Sex Pistols, The Clash’s Bankrobber and Girl On Fire by Alicia Keys.
She chose to take to her desert island Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man And The Sea, and a photo album full of pictures of her young family.
●Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 11.15am.
