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By TAMARA LUSH
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 4, 2000
MOON LAKE -After teaching preschool for nearly 10 years, Aimee Brown wants to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a firefighter.
Although it's an unusual midlife career change, both professions require the same skill, Brown says. Patience.
To keep a brush fire last month at bay, the 41-year-old Brown spent hours spraying water on a patch of charred grass. Standing on the side of State Road 52 with a dull, brown hose in her hands, Brown didn't look bored, even after a few hours.
So far, Brown, has fought six brush fires and helped with dozens of medical calls since she started volunteering in February.
Instead of the practical jeans and sneakers she normally wears in the classroom, Brown swaddled herself in thick, yellow firefighter's pants held up by red suspenders. A blue, short-sleeved T-shirt advertised her allegiance: Pasco Fire Rescue. Her blond ponytail peeked out of her hard hat. At the scene of a fire in Moon Lake, her face was gray with ash and traces of dirt crept under her peach-polished, manicured nails.
She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her T-shirt and grinned. Her adrenaline was pumping and she was happy.
"I'm not even worried about my own safety," she said. "Maybe that's going to come in time."
Brown is a rarity at Pasco Fire Rescue: she is one of 30 volunteer firefighters for the department, which employs about 225 full-time people.
She's unusual in other ways, as well. Brown is one of a handful of women in the department. She's also older than many of the volunteers and recruits.
Brown has taught prekindergarten at St. Thomas Aquinas in New Port Richey for nine years. She wants this coming school year to be her last.
In 2001, Brown hopes, she will become a full-time firefighter.
"I've wanted to do this for a long time," said Brown, who is married and the mother of two teenage sons.
Like many other firefighters, Brown loves the excitement of not knowing what will happen when she arrives at the fire station.
During the fire on State Road 52 that burned for nearly a week near Moon Lake Road in June, two women drove up with bottles of Gatorade and pretzels in their trunk for the firefighters. Brown beamed. For her, this was the best part of the long day. "I just like being out there, I like helping," she said.
Most of her time as a volunteer is spent as a gofer, running from a scene to the engine to pick up equipment. Because she still is in her six-month probationary period, Brown can't go into a burning building or fight a brush fire without a more experienced person at her side.
Brown plans to attend the fire academy in Tampa in January. To become a firefighter, she will have to pass a written exam and an "agility test," in which she will have to carry a 24-foot extension latter, drag a 150-pound dummy and pull a long, heavy hose off a fire engine.
At 5-foot-4 and barely 100 pounds, Brown knows she has to work on her upper-body strength. But she isn't going to let her size stand in the way.
"As a woman, I need to pull my own weight and show that I can do it," she said. "I have to push myself to meet the standards."
Usually she volunteers a few days a week with Station 21, an engine company that covers much of Hudson.
"She is very enthusiastic," said Lt. Rick Caravona, a full-time firefighter at Pasco Fire Rescue who also is the president of the volunteer organization. Volunteering, he said, "helps the people who aren't sure if they really want to be a firefighter."
Although Brown is interested most in firefighting, she also has to learn how to be an emergency medical technician.
She's been at dozens of car wrecks. Her first was an "extraction," meaning her co-workers had to open a car with a giant device that cuts through twisted metal to free the person trapped inside.
The tragedies do not bother her so much when she is working an accident scene, but that changes when she comes home to her family, which includes a 16-year-old who just got his license.
"I'm not thinking about anything else when we go on a call," she said. "But when I come home, I talk about safety with the family."
On a recent day she worked 12 hours and went to five calls.
"A brush fire, a vehicle fire, chest pain, a kitchen fire that was out by the time we got there and a home assist," she read from a journal she keeps of her calls.
"You fully prepare on the way," she said. "You just never know."