Vrooom, vrooom, vroooom - the Kawasaki GT 550 moves out of Whitehall Garda Station in Dublin. Garda Carol Feely is out the gates in a flash in response to a call. She's on the case, speeding to the trouble spot.

"The bike is by far the most exciting part for me. Not everyone is cut out for it," she says. Working as a garda has given her "a chance to make a difference. I feel I've helped a few families along the way.

"I've been lucky. I haven't come across anything devastating, but I've been called to domestic situations where there's a lot of pain and I feel I've made a difference.

Feely studied computer programming after the Leaving Cert and then she went to work in the United States before she applied to the Garda Siochana.

"I know if I'd gone for the guards immediately after leaving school I wouldn't have got it. I had no knowledge of life or people. The fact that I went to college, met different people and went out on work experience, and then went away made the difference. It not only taught me about people, but it taught me about myself as well."

Feely was "very quiet" at school, she says. Working as a garda is as much about meeting people in the community as it is about responding to traffic accidents or robberies, she explains.

"Whitehall is a very settled community," she says. "It's been there a long time and there are a lot of elderly people. Community work would be a huge part of our work.

"I'm suited to that type of a station. I have the personality to sit and talk to someone. I just like meeting people really."

Feely's first became interested in the gardai when, as a youngster, she got to know a young woman who had just joined the force herself. "She was just starting and she was full of enthusiasm. She was a great role model. She was a sergeant and she's a detective now."

After the Leaving Cert at the Presentation Convent in Terenure, Dublin, Feely went to Inchicore Vocational School for three years. In New York she worked for a company taking care of children. "It was a bit like Butlins," she says.

"I came home a different person. That's where I got the confidence. It was a fantastic experience. I was mixing with different people. When I came back I applied to the Garda. I didn't want a nine-to-five job. I had done work experience and I knew I just didn't want that."

She was called for an interview and her training started in early 1996. "I really took to it. Down in the college, everyone is there together, you make good friends."

After six months in the Garda training college in Templemore, Co Tipperary, she was sent to Crumlin Garda Station in Dublin for six months as a student.

"It was brilliant. You get to do a week in a lot of different units - the drugs unit, the task force. You get a great insight into all the different units."

Then, it was back to Templemore for a further three months. Then she was sent to Whitehall as a probationary garda for nine months. During this time, she had to keep a diary and write a 10,000-word dissertation.

Her work is "definitely varied", she says. "No two calls are the same. I love the variety of it. Although there are going to be calls when the adrenaline will be going, more often than not you have to judge a situation. There's the excitement and the adrenaline rush but you need a clear head."

Feely passed out as a garda in April last year.

Being on the bike "does create a reaction", she says. "People always stop to talk to you, if you're at traffic lights.

A routine day can include being called out to a traffic accident, patrolling the streets and housing estates, dealing with a robbery or a car theft, responding to a domestic situation, visiting a school to talk to young people and sometimes calling to check on an elderly person who may not be well.

As if that was not enough, Feely can also be seen on RTE's Crimeline. Once a month, she is involved in the recording of this programme. "It's brilliant," she says.