On Heritage Day in 2001 Penny Steyn was attacked by two unknown people who tried to strangle her.
Despite reporting the attempted murder, the police did not take the incident seriously.
Steyn had almost given up hope that the case would be followed up when she received a call that would change her life. It came from a young constable, Lucky Khumela, who told her: ‘If you have a problem, I don’t care which station you fall under, I need to know about it.”
This gave rise to a chain of events that led Steyn to join the Community Police Forum in Parkview, where she was later asked to train all levels of police officers in customer service and leadership.
Since then she has trained more than 1 800 members of the South African Police Service in Gauteng.
With the support of the police, she has trained more than 1 000 domestic workers in 14 suburbs in Gauteng on crime prevention and ongoing awareness.