Cindie Schooner-Ball | Sep 18, 2024

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Cindy, what an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us today. I was so excited to talk to you. I have never spoken to a firefighter, so this is going to be interesting today. But before we get to that, when did you decide you wanted to become a firefighter? [00:00:15] Speaker B: Well, I wasn't a child deciding that I was going to become a firefighter. I was actually in my late twenties, and I had put, I had a boyfriend who I put through. He was a forest ranger, and I was a waitress, model, bank teller. I did all kinds of work. So I was not 18 years old or younger, but I put them through fire school, and I always worked out, loved working out, you know, and I would go to the firehouse, and I was getting to the point in my life where I needed to make a decision, a career choice, because waiting tables was just, you know, I was getting to the end of my rope with that age wise and just, you know, choices career wise. I wanted something that meant something. And so I would go in and have dinner at the firehouse with him like most women and wives and girlfriends do. And I was expressing my fear of working in a tower for 25 years and collecting a watch at the end of it going, was that all there is to my life? And the chief said, you need to become a firefighter. And I said, you're crazy. And he said, wait, so hold on. [00:01:28] Speaker A: Did he explain that? Like, why? Did he say, why did he say that? [00:01:32] Speaker B: Because he knew that I was incredibly fit. I ran, I jumped rope. I still do worked out with weights, so I was in great shape. I have a b personality. I love people. And I would come to the firehouse to see my boyfriend, and he just said, you need to become a. You should become. Think about becoming a firefighter. It's an up and coming field for women. Now. This was 19, probably 85. [00:02:01] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:02:02] Speaker B: So, you know, I just kind of looked at him like, no, you're nuts. But I would go into the firehouse, and I looked down. You know, they, you always have a big table where everybody eats dinner, right? And it's all men. It's all guys. I knew them, and so I looked, I waited for them to start laughing, like, ah, come on, you're crazy. And they did. None of them. They said, they started chipping. They started saying to me, yeah, you should. You're in better shape than most of us. We'll help you come into the firehouse. We'll teach you, you know, the basics. That'll give you an, an edge on when you have to, you have to go to the fire academy in Florida and get your state of Florida fire certificate before you're eligible to start applying to different fire departments. And so it's a process. And so I said, well, you know, thanks, but no thanks. And as fate would have it, you know, the boyfriend and I had lived together a long time. I was 17 years old, started living with him, and things, our choices of what we wanted out of life started to part. And so we broke up. And I'm, you know, I'm in the unemployment office, which I never was. I was raised to get a job, you know, always have a job. I was not raised to get unemployment. And so I went in the unemployment line. I'm standing there, I look over and I see a sign that said, if you are an american Indian, call this number. A backstory to that is, my great grandfather was a full blooded mohawk, Indiana. And my mother had given me a note many years ago that said he was. He couldn't read or write, but he had to go before a judge and sign an x. And so his mom died. He was raised by his father. She died when he was a child. He was born on the banks of the Sandusky river. And, yes, he's full blooded. So my mother said, you know, you might need this one day. And I said, no, probably nothing. And I put it in a drawer, and I was. I was raised. I was born in a northern Ohio town, and it was not a good thing to be an Indian. It was very prejudicial. But then I was raised from the age of eleven. On 13, my sister became. My older sister became my legal guardian in Florida. And so then I was raised in Florida. So that's the backstory of that. So, long story short, I thought, what the heck? I went and I dug that paper out of my drawer in the closet. I went and I met with a career counselor for the Seminole Indians organization, showed her the letter, said, I want to become a firefighter, but I don't have the money. I didn't have two nickels to rub together. It cost $100, and I didn't have $100. And she was kind of. She was surprised, to say the least, that here's this young woman that said to be a firefighter, but I don't have the money. Showed her the letter, and they helped me financially. I joined. I went and signed up for the fire academy. And, you know, I never looked back. I never looked back. [00:05:13] Speaker A: What was the social norm at the time when, I mean, obviously, you know, these men sitting in the firehouse were supportive, but how about family? How about friends? What was happening around you at the time when you now are coming and saying, I want to be a firefighter? [00:05:31] Speaker B: For the most part, it was maybe surprise, but a lot of people were very supportive because they knew that I was in good shape and that I was smart and I really liked physical work. And they were kind of like, okay, if that's what you want to do. My parents, who were depression parents, they were both alive at the time. My dad was born in 1917 and my mother in 22. My father was the last of 19 kids, and he was a gruff mason. You know, he was a stone mason. So when I told you, he kind of brushed. He kind of said, oh, okay. You know, okay. My mother was maybe a little afraid, but at that time, I was living in Florida, and at that time, I was living with my boyfriend. So I was an adult. I wasn't child, which I'm thankful that that's the time that I wasn't. I think it would be difficult if I was 18 in a lot of ways, but I had. I had a job of the week club. I had worked a lot of jobs since I was 15, and I wasn't some newbie out there. You know, you're always going to get challenged. I tested for a year with different departments, and so different departments at the time, you had to physically go apply, put in an application. They gave a physical agility test, a written exam, an oral exam, and then they put you on a list for six months. And so the process is you get called in on an interview, and how you score is where you're at on a list. Nowadays, it's a lot easier. They do a mesh test. So all these departments are doing a big, big pile, one test for maybe six departments, as opposed to. This was the time when there wasn't Internet, there wasn't any of that. So you physically, you went to the fire academy. Once I did pass the fire academy, it was tough. I was the only woman and passed that and loved it. But they would have a cork board with all the possibilities to test for different departments. And so you would write everything down physically, call them up, go there, do the test. So it took me a year, and I knew that I was living down south in the Fort Lauderdale area, so I kind of limited my choices to Palm Beach, Miami, or Fort Lauderdale or Broward county. [00:07:44] Speaker A: How was the fire academy itself? What was the challenges there? What was the hard parts? [00:07:50] Speaker B: The hard part is I was lucky because I was physically fit, but it challenged me. It challenged me a lot more than I had ever been challenged before, because again, you're doing things in bunker gear, carrying hose over your shoulder. You've got air pack on. You're doing air pack drills. You're dragging 150 pound dummies a certain amount, and you get tested on, and if you don't pass, you don't go on. You're raising ladders by yourself, tying them off. You're learning all about the intricacies of fire behavior, and at that time, basically first aid. You're learning just very, very basic. You know, how to spot the signs of shock or take an assessment on somebody, take a blood pressure. That's about it. It was very minimal at that time. It wasn't connected to rescue at that point. And then there was an instructor from Ocala, where the main fire academy in Florida is, came to the satellite school, fire academy. They would go throughout the state. There's multiple ones throughout the state, depending on where you live, and they test you, and you either pass or fail. And I passed. So once I got that, then the hard work really began. And again, I tested for a year, and it was tough. It was hard. I mean, you'd show up on these tests at that time where I remember Palm Beach county, they had like 500 people testing for maybe two spots. [00:09:22] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:09:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:23] Speaker A: So these are all 500 people that have passed fire academy. [00:09:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:09:27] Speaker A: And they're all trying to be Josh for this, too. [00:09:30] Speaker B: Back then, it was really hard, and they would do, like a morning session and an afternoon session where they would have, you know, a couple hundred or they'd be testing all day, you know, and these tests would go on for two or three days, and they would pick, you know, who passed and where they would place from then. And that was how it was back then. It was very difficult. And it just so happened that I tested for Broward county. Now, Broward county encompasses Fort Lauderdale. It goes to the Palm Beach county line, Miami line, to the beach, and to the everglades. And so it's huge. This particular department. This particular department started out in, I think, 1980 as a volunteer department, and it was just all these different volunteers. And as the area got urban, and if you've been in that area, you know how urban it is, they decided to become a professionally paid fire department. And so in the early eighties, they did. So by the time I, you know, I tested, it was 1980, 619 87. I got hired in June of 1987 with one other woman and nine other men. And then they put us through what we called death camp. And if I. [00:10:44] Speaker A: Sounds fun. [00:10:45] Speaker B: Yeah. If I thought the fire academy was hard, it was kindergarten compared to this. And at this department. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Hold on, we can't let you get away before telling us what death camp is all about. [00:10:57] Speaker B: Death camp is. It's a paramilitary organization, the fire services. And death camp is when you're training for a department that has hired you, you learn all their protocols and you learn a lot more than the basic fire stuff. And you're tested every day and you're running and doing push ups and you're carrying ladders and you're climbing seven flights of stairs with 100ft of inch and three quarter fire hose over your shoulder, dropping to the ground, doing push ups. You're doing that several times a day. Then you're picking up axes and you're chopping telephone poles. Then you're, you know, all of those things you're learning. And then you have classrooms. So the fire academy I started in June and. Which is hot in Florida, and it just got progressively worse, progressively worse. Now they have a fire tower and, you know, they have it set up as an apartment. They have all these mazes and things. So then you have to learn how to operate in with a hose line or without it. And it's kind of like a right hand wall search. Left hand wall search. They teach you how to search for people in complete darkness. Just feel. And those are the things that you have to learn. And they smoke it up. You can't see anything. You have an air pack on, they have holes cut in the floor. So you always learn how to, you know, feel for things with your tools so you don't fall through a floor. [00:12:24] Speaker A: Oh, my lord. [00:12:25] Speaker B: And there's just all these things. Because that's what firefighting is all about. It's an inherent, dangerous profession. [00:12:30] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:31] Speaker B: And so, as you know, that was every day. That was, you know, every day, all day, Monday through Friday, and that was five and a half weeks. And the ending, the ending drill was a full day. This was to see, like, if you didn't pass any of the other ones, you were out and then there was somebody waiting in line to take your place. That's how competitive it is. [00:12:52] Speaker A: Oh, wow. And this isn't the 500 people. This is the ten that they took in. [00:12:57] Speaker B: Eleven people that got hired with Broward county that are now going through, they called a probie, but you're going through their five and a half weeks of death camp. We called it. [00:13:10] Speaker A: Wow. This is elite training. This is crazy. [00:13:13] Speaker B: Oh, it's training. It's hard yeah, it's firefighter training. Sure. And so you're learning all the ins and outs of, again, fire behavior, extinguishers, gas leaks, rescuing people. You're taking them out of buildings on ladders. But the last evolution was the one that if you didn't pass it, you were. You were out and it was a full day and it was going in through doing these different evolutions, they call them. And it ended up in the maze, which a maze is a maze, but it's zero visibility. And you had to take a hose line. And then some places that's so small you have to learn in the dark to unbuckle your air pack, harness, whip it around, still having your mask on because you're in smoke conditions, and push it through a small hole, either up, down or in front of you, and then attach it again and then continue on and then look for people to be rescued. They would have real. At that point, there was real instructors that were victims and you'd have to find them and you and your partner would have to find the hose line or whatever and drag them out. But the last one was you had to find a chip, like a colored chip. You couldn't see it, but you were looking for a chip at the end of this maze, and that meant you completed the evolution and you passed. And so I did. And so we, you know, we. It was so primitive back in the day, again, it's before the Internet or any of that. This really great crusty old chief that we loved. We loved him because we did stuff you can't do today. But there was all hay, you know, they would burn hay and he would take buckets of mineral spirits and throw them on the hay and light them up. And if you didn't come out of the building with your helmet melted, you weren't a firefighter or just black, you know. But anyway, he put, there's. There's three shifts because you work 24 hours in the firehouse. It's 24 hours on and 48 hours off. Not all departments, but that's how most of them work. So he put a, b and c shift, which is Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, and he put a, b and c written on little scraps of paper and he put it in a hat and he said, okay, you passed, so reach in and whatever piece of paper you pull out and you open that up, that's your shift. And so I pulled it out and I had Alpha a shift. And so then I started. People don't realize you're a probe. That's what they call. You've heard it, I'm sure, on the shows, you're a probe for the first year of your career. So you're tested by different officers throughout the year. And if you're smart, you're sponge. You're checking out the truck before, you know, get on shift, you know where everything's at, and you test, and if you fail a test again, the officer writes you up, you're gone. You have no union representation. You are gone. And so at the end of that year, then you become a rookie for five years. But in the meantime, to be an EMT was like the golden goose, because we were separate. Broward county. At Broward Fire, Broward EMs were the paramedics, and they were contracted to different cities within Broward County's borders. So what happened is, the minute I got hired, I signed up for EMT school. So I was training all day long, black and blue, driving a volkswagen that used to break down all the time, driving to EMT school. So I became an EMT as well, and that was a raise. And, of course, you know, job satisfaction. And so I started going to school for my fire officer one degree, and got that. And, you know, this is. Throughout the years, in the early nineties, Broward fire merged with Broward EMS, and we became a fire rescue, which is advanced life support vehicles. All the fire trucks had all the medical equipment in them, and I. So you had to become a paramedic to promote. And so, in the meantime, I was an acting driver. I drove all the fire trucks, ladder trucks, tanker trucks, and if you weren't number one or two on the list, you weren't getting promoted. And I was never number one or two, but. And I was also a fire lieutenant, so I would float around all over on a fire truck as a fire lieutenant. And so once we merged, I went to paramedic school 15 years into my career and became a paramedic. And then, I mean, that is a very, very tough, tough course. But then I was able to. I passed the driver's test and the lieutenant's test, became a paramedic. And they said, what do you want? So then I became a lieutenant, and I was on a lieutenant, not only on fire trucks, I did my time on busy, busy rescue trucks, and we had some that ran 25, 30 calls in a shift. Sheesh. There's no sleep, so that's. [00:18:03] Speaker A: That's 24 hours, eight calls, basically. Wow. That's basically every few hours. Wow. [00:18:10] Speaker B: Well, you'd never back in the station. You never see the station, right. You just constantly. [00:18:16] Speaker A: So you've gone through these two incredibly intensive training. I want to, with your permission, bring you back to your first real fire. What did that feel like? What did that look like? [00:18:27] Speaker B: Well, my first real fire was funny, but my first serious fire was not. And I wasn't operating as a firefighter then. I was one of the very few emts on the fire truck. So I assisted the paramedics, which was a different story. But my first fire was so funny because in my book, I grew up poor. I was a hungry kid. My parents, we never had an inside bathroom. And this was when I was a little girl. We had an outhouse and a pot behind a curtain. And it's all in my book, you know, the first fire I ever had. [00:18:58] Speaker A: Let's just say the name of the book. Make sure we get it in there. [00:19:00] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Sister in a brotherhood. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Sister in a brotherhood. Wonderful. I love that. [00:19:06] Speaker B: There it is. But the first fire was my first shift, and they take you around me and one other guy that was on my shift, too, that I'd gone to training with, and they take you around, introduce you to everybody. But in the meantime, the first fire that I had was in an outhouse. Somebody had set the toilet paper on fire. And it just seems so, you know, apropos. My first fire was, you know, in a porta john. [00:19:33] Speaker A: I love that. [00:19:34] Speaker B: And I laughed. I said, well, that's either my mother from heaven saying, hey, you got it, kid, or it was just funny. [00:19:42] Speaker A: So I was making a bet that your first kind of call would be getting a kitten down from a tree. Is that a cliche or is that a real thing, that firemen? [00:19:51] Speaker B: Oh, no, that's real. [00:19:52] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's a real thing. [00:19:53] Speaker B: Oh, sure, sure. Oh, yeah. I rescued kitties out of trees and ungrateful german shepherd that got his little head stuck in a little round hole chasing a cat and couldn't get out. He was going to die. And, you know, birds and walls and anything that you could imagine. Yeah, yeah. They call my, you know, people call 911 for any reason. Yeah, yeah, sure. [00:20:18] Speaker A: So I appreciate that. Let's go to the first serious fire. [00:20:24] Speaker B: The serious fire. And again, I was on a fire truck, and we got called into a fire, and I was an EMT at that time, which was the golden goose. It was early in my career, and it was. It was an independent adult living facility in the ghetto. And I guess somebody had been smoking or whatever. And you go into these places and, you know, all the little rooms everywhere. Anyway, they called our engine in the. And all I could see was just all these multiple, multiple, you know, lights from all the different engines and different units that were there before us and all the different hose lines and everything. And I saw. My lieutenant instructed me as the EMT on the truck to assist the two paramedics. Now, there were bodies laid out and they're trying to intubate them, and they're just, you know, they. I was assisting them, and so my first taste was, it was eleven people that died. There were eleven people. Yeah, that I think ended up dying. It was so long ago. I'd have to really do my research, but they would bring them out and, you know, I would be in charge of helping the paramedics. And at that time, as an EMT, I would take their vitals and, you know, I'll never forget, you know, the lady I had, she. Her skin was burned and it was falling off, and she was clearly in severe shock. And you, you know, just saying, what happened? What happened? And you're trying to comfort them. And then the two female paramedics who I respect and love to death enormously taught me so much. They had, they treated me with respect and taught me so many things. And they were excellent paramedics. And they're innovating people just down the line, one by one by one, and we're transporting these people to the hospital. It was a really bad fire. Ended up being one of the worst for, you know, boarding basically adult living facilities in that area at the time. Yeah. And it was, you know, it was, you know, you, you go to that job and you learn that you have to put your emotions aside because you're there to help people in whatever capacity, either as a firefighter going in with a hose or not, and. Or the medical side afterward, because again, we became both, you know, down the line. But at that time, I was an EMT, which was kind of rare, actually, at the time. [00:22:38] Speaker A: So it's. I don't know if I would call this funny or not, but I, as you're telling that story, I suddenly remembered I was actually in a. In a fire. Our building burnt down. And I, I didn't even remember that, so I didn't even remember that that happened to me. But as it, as you're sharing this, that everything just suddenly came back to me. Suddenly. I was very young. I was maybe eight or nine. It was a building, and we were. Was an electrical fire. Some idiot threw a water on an electrical fire. And I don't know if I was there seeing this or this is what my parents told me it's kind of coming back to me now, but my dad was there and he was like shouting as he saw the water being thrown on it, not to do that. And the whole thing just went south. I can't remember all the details, but it just, everything just came back to me in 1 second. [00:23:28] Speaker B: Terrific. [00:23:29] Speaker A: Remember there was something. Yes, some people tried to go in the lift and there was a lot of shouting, don't go in the lift. And it's just a whole mess. Yes, you have, I mean, this is horrific, but you have, I'm going to call them casualties lying on the floor. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Yes. [00:23:44] Speaker A: How do you, who do you, who do you treat first? [00:23:46] Speaker B: Well, you have protocols and triage and you do different. You assess them, you obviously take them, if they're in a fire situation, you obviously take them outside. And at that time that, I wasn't a paramedic when I first started and so they were taken, taken to the rescue for the paramedics. But, you know, you did CPR on them. You could do whatever you could as an EMT. And that was early in my career. You know, that's how it works when you're all, when you're fire rescue and you know, you have victims, patients, you know, that's what happens. You take them out and assess them. Or if it's not a fire, you do what you do inside, wherever you find them, a store or a restaurant or their home or it could be anywhere where people call 911 for an emergency situation and you assess them. And again, as a paramedic, you know, you innovate people. You know, you start iv's, you administer drugs, you know, you do all of those things, quite extensive things on a, an emergency basis. And so that's why training is so training and working busy, busy houses and working with wonderful people who are, who have been around, who, some of them went on to become doctors. And, you know, I was smart enough to learn from them and continue my training. And always I love the busy stations for that because that's how you got your chops, you got your confidence. Just like fires. I tell people, you know, you're lucky if, you know, your first fire, you know, is a pot on the stove and then maybe the next fire is a mattress and maybe the next fire is the cabinets. You know, it's extended in the cabins if you're lucky enough. But you learn from every experience. You talk about it, you train. And so that's how firefighters work. You know, you're constantly going to school, you're constantly training. We would go to the hospitals and have, go to seminars from doctors. So, I mean, it's constant. And people, people think that, you know, I used to say, people would say, oh, you're, you guys are playing checkers at the firehouse. I'm like, not really. You know, I mean, some stations, you're like, you're, you don't get sleep, and you, you learn from that. And other ones, you do, you're able to cook together and get a good night's sleep. But, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot that you even do in a fire station besides run emergency calls. And people don't realize that, that you're, you know, you're, you're checking hydrants, you're conducting inspections, you're looking at buildings and talking about them. What would happen if this caught on fire? You're, you're learning. You're looking at buildings being built to see how they were built. There's career days. You go to the schools. You go to the nursing homes. So, you know, there's lots and lots of things that you do besides just running the calls. But I loved it. I loved all of it. I really, really loved it. [00:26:37] Speaker A: Is this more of a police area, the kind of forensic aspect of what caused the fire? Who gets to that kind of role? [00:26:45] Speaker B: It would be the fire marshal. And, you know, they show up, but, you know, they will. They show up. If it's a fire of any significance and find the origin. You learn basic things. You learn basic things as a firefighter. When you're training, when you're going to school about fire behavior and, you know, to look for that. But, you know, most of the time, that's that. You wait for the fire marshal to show up. And, and again, if you're smart, you learn from them, you know, if you can and talk to them. [00:27:16] Speaker A: So if you think through historically, what are the, what were the most significant surprises that kind of shocked you? If it's human behavior, if it was interacting with the public or maybe on the job, what were the big things that you never expected that you learned? [00:27:32] Speaker B: I think it's. I don't know how big it is. But, you know, again, I grew up as a poor kid, and, you know, it used to amaze me, kind of, to run calls on people that had so much more in areas than I would never have had. I could have, you know, not even dreamed of having. And how maybe not all of them. This is some of them. Like, again, you can't put everybody in one category. How cavalier they were with actually, you know, either their things or maybe their children. They'd get their. They give their 16 year old kid a, you know, $100,000 mercedes for their birthday, and they'd be, you know, driving crazy around. And, you know, we ran a few calls where they hit. They hit the, you know, yard people. You know, they just ran them down, you know, and you're just, like, thinking, oh, my God. Just thinking maybe their expectations of, you know, take off your shoes before you come to my house. And we're like, no, we don't do that. We don't take off our shoes. You called us, we're not doing. And then things that I've always known, my mother kept. My mother insisted you could eat off the floor. I grew up in a household that was, we didn't have anything, but you could eat off the floor. And what you had, you kept nice. And so again, it reconfirmed that money has nothing to do with class and integrity. And I worked the worst of the worst hoods. And we go into these wonderful homes, and they were the same. They were wonderful people. And, you know, you really see, God, you know, these little kids, man, you talk about tough is the little kids that are growing up in those environments. They have to be. And so you. I don't know that any of that shocked me, because, again, I was. I was 30 years old when I got hired, and I turned 31 two months later. And thank God I had, because I had been through a lot of life experiences. I was out on my own at 16 years old. I started living with my boyfriend, who was, you know, at the time. I lived with him twelve years. I was 17. So I had. And I was, like I said, I was a bank teller, a waitress, a model, a secretary. I had dealt with lots of different situations in my life prior to the fire service. So I. I think that I had a pretty good head on my shoulders to deal with a lot of things. [00:29:46] Speaker A: You know, I was. I managed a consulting group, and I traveled all over the world, and I found that I was in the middle of the Amazonas forest in Brazil. And I met this guy, and I felt so connected to him. And I felt like he was more similar to me than my neighbors here in the United States. And that struck me as so surprising because I thought, well, I would have more in common in my worldly views with somebody who lived next to me. Looks like me had the same education as me. And that just struck me that, you know, people are people everywhere, right? Doesn't matter where you were born, it doesn't matter how much money you have, doesn't matter the color of your skin. Yep. And, you know, he is, you know, is one of my, my closest friends today. Wow. And that was just, you know, and he, you know, we think about poor here in the states. Pouring them zones. Forest is a whole different level of poor. [00:30:42] Speaker B: Different level. When you go to other countries and you see poor. Yeah, it's a whole different level. It really is. Yeah. And there isn't anybody to help you. You know, you're right. [00:30:51] Speaker A: No, there's, I mean, and there's just the horrific things that happen there and what happens in the streets, and it's just a whole different level that gives you really perspective. [00:31:01] Speaker B: Gives you perspective. Because I think the basics is, you know, wherever you're from, people want. The people want generally the same thing. They want to be able to fulfill their needs as far as food and shelter. They love their children. That's right there just as much as anybody else loves their children. They, you know, they love their family. They want to take care of their family. They want to take care of themselves. And they want opportunity. They want opportunity. Most people do want to do something. And so I think that's the commonality of being a human, and that's what I say to people. You know, I am very, very lucky that I grew up in a house that, you know, my mom and dad were both, you know, poor. But my mother would say, you know, there are a lot people out there that are a lot worse off than we are. And my mother would, she would make, like, biscuits and water gravy and set a little tray out on our back porch for the, they called them hobos back in the day, and she said that this is for them. But I've always had that in my heart that I really try, I really believe in helping people. I know it sounds kind of, you know, panty Annie or whatever, but, you know, I also am very aware of, you know, the people out there that are users and abusers and, you know, that sort of thing. But I have a very positive attitude with people, and that's kind of the way I love my career. You know, there's some people you're going to help, and other ones you're just not. [00:32:26] Speaker A: I appreciate that you decided to write a book, and we mentioned the book already, but why did you want to write a book? What brought that on? [00:32:34] Speaker B: Well, again, it goes back to my childhood. I started reading when I was four. Again, I grew up in a household where, you know, I mean, we didn't have Christmas presents one year, I always say. I think subconsciously what happened to me is we had no presents for Christmas one year. So the firefighters came to our house to give us presents. And I was six years old and my brother was twelve and a half, and they came to our home and I got my first doll, chatty Kathy doll, and my brother, he was six foot eight of them, and not then, but he was, he grew to be six foot eight, big, tall skinny guy, and he got a bowling set. And I always say, well, maybe that's where I got that from, I don't know. But anyway, books and reading, and I used to write poems and all kinds of things, but that was my escape. I felt like, you ever see the, or, you know, the cartoon like Aladdin, where he's on a magic carpet and then, you know, he's looking down at everything and different possibilities? And that's how I felt as a child, reading books. I was a voracious reader and I started writing. And so what happened is, it's kind of a funny thing is when I got in the fire service, you know, people would ask me all the time, because I was one of two females, there were no males, and they were always curious. And so, and then things would bother me and I always got things out by writing. So I would keep a pad of paper and a pen by my bunk bed and I would write calls down. And what really sparked it, which is kind of funny, is we went to college to get our fire officer one, our associate's degree in fire science and english composition was one of them. And I laughed because I met my husband on the job. So we went to school together. And he comes from a very academic background. Father had his doctorate in Berkeley, mother went to Stanford, uncle taught at Harvard, you know, that sort of thing, so. But he hates writing. He can't, he can't spell. He, I mean, you ask him math, physics, history, he's a whiz, don't ask him to spell anything. I excelled at it, I, and so what happened is they had us write a composition for english comp, and I was just like, oh, man, it just woke something up in me, in my brain and I just wrote it and I got an a plus. And the teacher was like, oh my God. The professor actually was like, oh my God. And of course that sparked it. And I actually had that story in the book that I wrote about my mother. And so what happened is, you know, as retirement loomed, and I just always, I thought, why not? You know, I love to write, and all the reports that I used to write, medically and for fires, particularly medically, people would say, you're the most descriptive writer. We don't even have to see the patient. I never had anybody come back to me and question my medical, what happened on either a fire or a medical call, because I'm very descriptive. I want you to be able to see who I'm talking about when you're reading about it. And I've had people with the. So I decided, long story short, I, you know, I thought about writing a book, and it's a lot. It's one thing to say you're going to write a book. It's a whole different animal to write a book. So I was lucky enough, three years. My nephew was friends, actually, with an editor, very, very well known editor in Austin, Texas. And I kept saying, you know, I wonder if she would be interested. He's like, she has no time. She has no time. So finally I started doing research. In the way that you present yourself to potential editors is you write what they call a query letter, and it's a one page resume. What your book is, target audience, who you are, what you hope you know, to gain, you know, the whole thing in one letter. And I wrote that. And finally I said, you know, I'm going to start sending these out. And he said, well, wait a minute. Let me just ask her if she'd be interested. She might have a break now. This, three years later, sent it to her. She immediately called me, and she said, yes, I want to. I want to become your editor. You are a storyteller and a writer. I was thrilled, but it took like 12,000 word stories, compilation of stories. And I worked with her a year, and she would push and pull me and say, no, you can't put that in there and know, and I'm pushing you on this. You need to expand. And I learned so much from her. I just. She's a amazing. And so that turned into a very good manuscript. And then I was turned over to another set of editors. I worked with proofreader editors, illustrators. That was for. That was another probably six months. Then in the meantime, as you know, if you know, know anything about it, you have to get someone to do your book cover. And I helped design it. You have to do all the legalities, like registering it. There's a lot to it that people don't realize. And I always say I did not write the book. You know, again, I wrote the book because I genuinely wanted to get my story out there to inspire young people, young women in particular, to, hey, you know, it doesn't matter where you come from. If you put in the hard work and if this is something that interests, you know, that it's, it's going to be a hard road, but if you're willing to put in the work, go for it. It's, it's one of the most rewarding careers, in my opinion, that you could do to help serve others. And so the book came out and I ended up winning a bronze medal for indie awards and a couple other things. And I've done some podcasts, a lot of podcasts, which I didn't know how I'd do in the beginning, but I found I'm very comfortable with it, which has worked out. I like that. Done some book readings. So my book is out. And again, I'm proud of it. I'm working on something else now that I think is kind of interesting that I'm going to start doing that I've been working on. [00:38:12] Speaker A: I mean, you know, I think a lot of us don't understand how difficult it is to publish a book. It is truly, it is truly a feat. I mean, it's no surprise to me that, you know, everything you've gone through to become and be a firefighter, that you can overcome writing a book, but truly is a challenge. I have a difficult question for you. [00:38:33] Speaker B: Okay. [00:38:34] Speaker A: What would you tell, what would you tell 20 year old Cindy. [00:38:39] Speaker B: I would tell 20 year old Cindy that life is going to get better with hard work. That where you think you are at age 20? Because at 20, I really had no, you know, I was just working jobs that, just to get a paycheck, you know, I was living with a boyfriend that, you know, again, a 17 year old love is a lot different when you're 30. So you, you mature a lot. And, you know, I always had this, people ask me all the time, where did this inner strength come from? From? And I said, I've always had that very strong inner strength. And again, I feel very fortunate that I didn't find the fire service till I was 30 as opposed to 18 year old, 20 year old girl because there are a lot of distractions and a lot of people that will try to sway you one way or another for their own game. That could be true for probably a lot of profession, but I had been wise enough to, you know, go. I had gone through a very traumatic thing when I was six years old. I was molested by a neighbor boy and my parents didn't know it. And I was only six. My oldest sister came home. I had a sister that was 16 years older than me and my sister that raised me was eleven years older than me. So the 16 year old came home and at that time, this is how poor we were. You know, the silver buckets that you feed your animals in, you fill up with water. That was my bathtub. So my mother heated up water. My sister was, you know, bathing me, going, something isn't quite right. So started the wheels spinning. I ended up sitting in a courtroom at six years old in front of a full jury of people telling my story. It really affected me for I was messed up for a long time. And my parents were the type of people that if you don't talk about it, you'll forget about it because it wasn't talked about in those days. It really affected me pretty deeply until probably my twenties. And I had a girlfriend, she was my best friend. And she said, you're going to counseling. I said, I don't want to go to counseling. She said, you're going to counseling. And she introduced me to a counselor and he probably saved my life, really. So that's kind of a backstory that's in my book as well. I went through a lot of hardships, but again, at 20, I just was sort of floundering out there. But I would tell myself, you know what, just keep your nose to the grindstone and your eyes forward and really look around at opportunities and really think, you know, the job, you know, the job that you think about what inspired you or what, you know, what you have passion about and don't let anyone deter you. And you're not always going to, you're not going to have success right away. At least I never, I didn't, but, you know, just have that, have that integrity and have that drive that you can take it day by day and accomplish what you want. And my mother, who was 6th grade educated, would tell me, she'd say, you know, I'd say, you know, mom, I think maybe I'll go to school. She said, well, we can't afford to send you, but if you ever wanted to go, you know, you could go, you'd have to work hard. I say, yeah, maybe I'll go to school. She goes, listen, let me tell you something. She goes, you need to start and decide because before you know it, five years will come and go. And if you don't start now, just think if you start now, how far, look where you'll be in five years. But if you don't then that five years later have come and gone and you're still going. Oh, I think I might want to go to school or I might want to do this. And that stuck with me as well. [00:42:10] Speaker A: That's such a. That's such an important message. I get to advise and help people from all walks of life. I'm not wearing my blazer today, but when I do, I. I have my rotary pen and I have my Duke of Edinburgh award, which is a less known movement, but it's also about community service. And I tell. I share my story, which is a stupid one. I mean, it's. You know, I had dyslexia. [00:42:33] Speaker B: There are no stupid stories. Stop it. [00:42:35] Speaker A: Well, you know, it's. I had dyslexia, and I basically, you know, I brought my test home and I just tore it up because I was so ashamed that my math was so bad, and I didn't want to show it to my. To my mother and. But to your point, you know, at some stage, I can't remember how I came to this conclusion or some told you if there was a t shirt, I don't know what. But I came to the understanding that where everybody did, you know, question number ten and 15 and 22. I had to do 123-4567 I had to do every single one of them to. I just had to work ten times harder than anybody else. And at some stage, I understood. And even just telling the story, I feel the ghost bumps. I understood that hard work bears interest over time that multiplies. And if you work harder today, tomorrow, over years, it just creates such an advantage for you that it doesn't matter where you started from and how disadvantaged you were. If you just keep at it and you take one sip at a time and one day at a time, you can really get and get almost anywhere. And, you know, I. One of the points is, I recall that, you know, when I was in college, people came to me to get help with their math and computer science, and they didn't go to the teacher. In fact, I was doing with a couple of my friends stuff so complicated that they came to us to advise because the teacher didn't know how to help. And that. That, to me, has always been an important lesson, and that's what I share. Like, you can go anywhere, just take one step at a time. As long as you do that, every day you're in, you're out. You will exceed anybody else who had any kind of intelligence or whatever advantage, hard work will take you further. So I just feel so inspired by the story that you shared. And it really resonates with me and I'm sure as it will resonate with our audience. Cindy, I hope so. [00:44:33] Speaker B: I hope so. [00:44:36] Speaker A: I am sorry that you had to go through the adversities that you share, but I am appreciative that you are vulnerable to share that with our audience. And I am hopeful that there is people out there that may hear this and may find the courage to take the right steps on their path towards healing and strength. I do appreciate your vulnerability greatly. One of the things we do, and as a host, I try to never talk, but this is just, you know, I'm the guy who asks the questions, not share the stories. But one of the things we do in Rotary, it's called Rider Rotary youth and leadership. And we have a session. It's called you're not alone, where it's kind of a sharing session. And this topic, it always brings me to tears and shocks me, but this topic of abuse always comes up multiple times. It's just. It's just so hard to believe that, you know, this thing has any. Could even exist, but it's happening all the time. And then last week, we spoke to a border patrol and he was telling us about sex trafficking and children, and then they harvest the organs. And I was just. It's even hard to even digest when people say the words. You're like, no, that can't be a real thing. [00:45:59] Speaker B: Unfortunately, there's a lot of horrific things that go on in the world. You just have to, you know, hopefully do what you can as an individual to again, like, you're getting your message out. Hopefully I am. To inspire people, too. You can't change the world or help everybody in the world. But if you change one person, one person, and that's a step forward. [00:46:19] Speaker A: Absolutely. Cindy, thank you so much. I appreciate you. And we're going to say the name of the book one more time so everybody goes out and gets it. [00:46:27] Speaker B: It's called sister in a brotherhood. [00:46:30] Speaker A: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Cindy, I appreciate you. [00:46:32] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Ari, what a pleasure.