N.C. Female Fire Captains Love Their Careers

GREENSBORO -- Save your "Gee whiz, ain't that cute?" reaction for some other challenge to gender stereotypes.

City fire Capts. Wendy Cheek and Carol Key say that they and hundreds of other female firefighters nationwide have moved way beyond that.

"I've always just tried to be the best firefighter I can be," Key said. "The one thing I hope more than anything is that before you judge me based on my gender, get to know me ... because most people who have taken the time to do that don't have those misconceptions."

Key and Cheek are the city's two highest-ranking female firefighters on active duty. Each supervises a fire team, occupying a leadership role that regularly exposes them to the kinds of danger and physical stress that society traditionally has limited to the male of the species.

The fire department has 25 female firefighters in its ranks, part of a heritage that goes back 30 years and has produced one deputy chief along the way. But that's in a present-day roster of 500-plus -- which amounts to less than 5 percent of the force.

City officials are actively recruiting women for the next fire academy, which has not been scheduled yet but likely will begin toward the end of this year.

Applicants have until March 30 to submit their initial paperwork.

Ideally, the next class of 20 to 24 recruits would match city demographics, meaning about half would be women.

"From my viewpoint, it would be nice to have a fourth of them being women, a fifth at least," said Capt. Kelly Giles, who heads the department's recruiting program. "The situation we have right now doesn't reflect the city's demographics. It's a slow process (changing that), but you have to make an effort."

Cheek and Key hasten to add that theirs is a tough, hard-nosed profession and is not for everybody. If you don't have the fire in your belly, so to speak, find something else to do with your time and talents.

"It's about attitude, tenacity and gut, and giving it everything you have to get the job done," said Cheek, who leads the city's busiest fire station -- No. 4 on Gorrell Street -- every third day for 24 hours straight.

She fills that role every three days because that's how the department structures its firefighters' work schedule -- one full day on followed by two days off.

No. 4 answered 3,500 calls last year, averaging just under 10 calls a day for everything from stabbings and car wrecks to the traditional house fires many people imagine as the bulk of a firefighter's daily duties.

In fact, the department often is on the scene for emergencies that have nothing to do with burning buildings.

"We get calls on just about everything," said Key, whose husband, Kevin Key , also is a fire captain. "If it's a shooting, we're coming. If it's a medical call, we're coming."

That's because fire teams are more numerous than the countywide network of emergency medical technicians. Trained in first aid, a fire squad often can get there to start basic treatment before EMTs reach the scene and take over.

"We sleep through the night some nights, but not many," said Cheek, 44, who has been with the department since 1995.

She looked into becoming a firefighter after taking courses to be a probationary officer, or possibly, an FBI agent. She wasn't sure either profession was for her, but she definitely wanted something that involved physical activity rather than sitting behind a desk.

There was no coordinated outreach to prospective, female firefighters back then, so she just called the department's training center one day. "I didn't even know if they had female firefighters."

Cheek made her mark in the department initially on its Urban Search and Rescue Team as an expert in swift-water rescue, responding to such emergencies as a driver trapped inside a car surrounded by a flooded stream.

She was promoted to captain in 2004.

Carol Key, 43, is a graphic artist by training. She discovered firefighting could be a career path for women during a yearlong stint as an art director in California during the mid-1990s, when she met a San Francisco firefighter who suggested she might be a good candidate.

After she returned to Guilford County, Key joined the Oak Ridge Volunteer Fire Department to see if she was suited to the work, decided she loved it and joined the city department in 1998.

She's now posted at Station No. 48 on Vandalia Road in southwest Greensboro.

The Keys have two school-age children. But their schedules mesh neatly to give each parent more one-on-one time with the kids than many families with more traditional weekday patterns, Carol Key said.

She works one day, her husband works the next, and they both have every third day free. "I have friends that work 8-to-5 and they're very envious of my schedule."

She and Cheek acknowledge there are challenges for a woman trying to make her way in an organization "submerged in a mostly male world" as Key describes it.

People are blunt with criticism. The job has to be accomplished at all costs. Rookies get ribbed and stuck with all the grunt work, whether they're male or female.

Cheek served as Carol Key's mentor for her first several years in the department. They both looked up to Deputy Chief DeeAnn Staley, one of the first two women to join the department in the 1970s. Staley is now retired.

But for a department its size, Greensboro has a relatively small number of female firefighters. And that's something that needs to change, Key and Cheek say.

"I think that as a female, I do bring something different to the scene," Cheek said. "In a medical emergency, as a female, (victims) will look at you first because there's a comfort in that for them. ...

"We just bring something a little different, not better or worse, just a little different."

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or [email protected]