CAROL Stone spent Boxing Day at work, a result of the discovery of the body of 23-year-old Ruby Love in a Southall canal.

Twenty-seven years of this kind of experience with the Met police has made this civilian support officer an invaluable asset to Ealing borough police, and is probably one of the reasons she has been made an MBE for services to the police.

Yet the divorced mother of one, who lives in Hillingdon, confesses she has no idea who put her name forward for a New Year's honour, and when the Gazette called her on Friday said she had not even got round to telling her boss, borough commander Chief Superintendent Andy Rowell.

'Gobsmacked' was how she described her reaction on hearing the news a few weeks before. "I'm very honoured - and surprised," she said.

Born in Southall, Mrs Stone worked on community cohesion initiatives there in the 1980s, when the different ethnic minority groups 'were barely speaking to eachother'.

She witnesses Sikh, Hindu and Muslim groups sit down around a table for the first time and says nowadays she is stil in regular contact with community leaders and an honorary member of faith groups in the Southall community.

She was asked to act as the liason for the emergency services in the aftermath of the Southall train crash of 1997, normally the preserve of a police officer, and she put in the 18 hour days required as the support to the borough commander after a major incident. Similar duties followed the 2001 Ealing bomb, when Mrs Stone was dragged from her bed by a 1.15am phone call.

"I think they had the confidence in me to be able to do that," she explained. "It was amazing the way the emergency services worked together."