Disillusioned and burnt out at just 25, Dorinda Cox faxed off her resignation letter to the Kalgoorlie police station, giving up on a career she'd poured herself into.
After eight years in the force, she walked out on a job that held so much promise but ultimately exposed her to what she called "the worst of the worst" of human behaviour.
As a 17-year-old, at the suggestion of her dad, she signed on as a police cadet, becoming one of few Aboriginal women serving in the Western Australia Police Force.
But it didn't sit well with everyone in her family.
She recalls relaying the news that she'd left school to become a police officer to her grandmother, who was taken aback and responded: "Why would you want to do that?"
Seated across from her nan — a Stolen Generations survivor who had seen seven of her own children removed by police — Senator Cox said she'd never forget her grandmother asking: "Are you going to take children away?"
She made a "solemn" promise to her elder then and there that she would never remove kids from their parents.
"I said, 'Nan, we don't do that anymore, police don't remove kids'," Senator Cox said.
"For me, it was always a push-pull between the institution and what they want you to do and what they see their role as, versus me as a very naive 17-year-old thinking I could change some of that."
Eight years after signing up, she said she felt defeated by the demands of the job and the strained relationship between the force and her people.
"I wasn't going to change an age-old institution that operated on a lot of patriarchy. I didn't have the power to do that."
After seeing horrific incidents during her career — including where women had been stabbed or hit over the head with a plank of wood — she said the time on the frontline had helped to shape a lifelong passion to reform the systems that failed women and children affected by violence.
A family violence survivor herself, the Yamatji Noongar woman went on to carve out a successful career in government, and in the non-government sector as an advocate for women and girls.
Dorinda Cox, now 44, has now started on a new path, one that she believes will give her people a new voice for Indigenous women and mothers.
She will become the first Aboriginal woman from Western Australia to serve in the federal parliament.
The new Greens senator yesterday became the fifth Indigenous woman in Canberra, paying back a promise she made to herself as a teenager.
On a visit to Canberra with her mum in 1994, she was struck by the power of the parliament over her people and the absence of black representatives.
At the time, there were no Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander politicians serving in the parliament.
Prime minister Paul Keating had given his landmark Redfern Speech two years earlier and she read a copy while she visited the parliament.
For the first time in her young life, she said a prime minister's words spoke directly to "my family and my history".
This week, as Senator Cox, that Aboriginal girl returned to Canberra to be sworn in.
She will also make her first speech to the Senate after a visit to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and a welcome to country by Ngunnawal and Ngambri people.
Senator Cox enters Parliament at a unique time in Australian history, when there is more pressure on politicians than ever before to deliver on gender equity for women in all parts of their lives.
The definition of Senator Cox's success will be what she describes as a "beacon" for other First Nations women to know that there's a place for them at the house on the hill.
"This is possible, you can create your own journey."
