The Denver Fire Department’s newest class of firefighters will go down in history as the most diverse in the department’s history and will chip away at its goal of bringing more women into its fire houses.
The graduates, who received their badges in a Friday ceremony, included a former Denver Broncos tight-end, two female military veterans, a female “helitack” firefighter, who repelled from helicopters to battle blazes, and a professional boxer.
Six of the 23 students were women, making this batch of female firefighters the largest in Denver’s history. The department now has 59 women out of 1,042 firefighters, a 5.6% rate that exceeds the national average, which is typically from 3% to 3.5%, said Capt. Greg Pixley, the department’s officer in charge of recruiting and outreach.
“It’s very diverse now, and I kind of wanted to tap in and kind of add to that diversity,” said Jessica Schaefer, one of the graduates and a military veteran. “I just wanted to be a figure for young girls growing up and just kind of get them to see that women can do the same thing that men can do.”
Schaefer, a Denver native, grew up athletic and interested in service. The culture of the city and the fire department matched her military beliefs and seemed like the obvious next step after serving as a military police officer, she said.
Pixley said it’s rare to see women in fire departments because the cultural ideals embodied by females may differ from those of traditional firefighters.
“Our goal is to represent the community,” Pixley said. “We certainly would like to make sure [women] know they can be a Denver firefighter.”
Wesley Duke, who played tight-end for the Broncos in 2005, said the day was a long time coming. The new recruits have spent the past 18 weeks in grueling training made up of extremely demanding written and physical work.
“It was a lot of long hours, so it took me away from my family,” Duke said.
He said that after playing for the Broncos, he became a truck driver, and the reason he quit that was so he could be home more with his family. But the training kept him away from home, too.
“I want to retire from this, I eventually want to get to be an engineer and driving the fire rigs, and just being in the system and helping the city the best way I can,” Duke said.
One graduate, Michael Knecht, missed the ceremony because he is deployed with the military. His wife accepted his badge.
During the ceremony, Capt. Sarah Kamstra played a video of the recruits in training. Friends and families watched as their loved ones scaled multiple-story buildings, deployed ladders and hosed down raging fires onscreen.
Danny Turney, who was elected by his peers to speak on behalf of the graduates, described the trials of academy training. The two-minute drill will stick out in their minds.
“This was a drill that at random, an instructor would walk into our classroom and say, ‘Two minutes.’ We would have two minutes to run out to the gear shed, don all of our gear in full, and report to the south side of the drill ground with all of our gear on,” Turney said. “I’m convinced the two-minute drill actually takes three minutes to accomplish.”
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