(exciting music)
- I grew up on the extreme South Side of Chicago
in Gary, Indiana.
I did not know anything about the USDA Forest Service.
- I'm from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina,
so I'm a city girl.
My mother, she became a single parent,
so she had to work two or three jobs around the clock.
- My Mama had me when she was in tenth grade.
15 years old, was working in a saw mill
on the summertime helping pay bills, so
I grew up very young.
- You know, being from Chicago, where I grew up at
there was gang life, you know, there was drugs,
you know I just kinda look back at my life,
and a lot of times I was judged wrongly.
- I am a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe
around Walker, Minnesota.
- Grew up in downtown Kansas City.
Pretty much when I went to high school,
I was gonna do like everybody else,
get a job right out of school.
- After you graduate high school,
you're gonna want to start thinking about a career.
One of the things you might want to consider is
United States Forest Service.
They're a multifaceted, multi-state agency
that protects over 150 million people
in every state in the country,
and every type of geography you can imagine.
There's potential for travel, tuition reimbursement,
and very, very competitive wages.
- I'd say everybody that fight fire,
they get bitten by the fire bug.
It's a way to make good money, but also be outdoors.
- I fell in love with fire while I was at job corps,
and what inspired me to work for the Forest Service
was one of the counselors there.
She was an African American woman.
I said, "Wow, I want to wear one of those uniforms.
"I want to work for the Forest Service."
- There are many African American males.
You might go to a training, or you might go to a fire,
and you might just be you,
and there could be 100, there could be 1000 people.
- I went to Alaska.
I stepped off that plane, the air was fresh,
I said, "Oh, wow!"
I was the only African American on my squad,
but there was one more female.
She was fit, I mean fit, fit, in shape.
She was a sawyer, so she ran the chain saw,
and I was like, man, you know, that's what I want to do.
She encouraged me.
I had a hard time walking up that hill.
She said, "Come on, girl, come on!"
I said, "I'm coming!"
- Individuals from all walks of life,
individuals from all ethnic groups,
are represented in our workforce.
- You'll see women in all different kinds of jobs,
at all different levels.
Throughout their career, they've risen up to
more of a management supervisory level.
- You want to prove that you're technically capable.
You want to prove you can do the physical things.
I bring some qualities to this that they don't have,
and I need to showcase those.
- If you an outside person, these are the types of career,
and we got a job for you.
If you an inside person like me, we got those careers,
and we have a job for you as well.
- You can be a computer person, you can be a support person,
you can run heavy equipment, you can run a chain saw.
- I'm in aviation right now,
and I'm a helicopter crew member,
but I'm also a helicopter manager trainee.
It's pretty exciting.
I mean, flying at high altitudes and things like that,
sometimes it can get scary,
sometimes it can be bad on your stomach
if you fly too long (chuckles).
- Some of the biggest advice I could give
to somebody that's interested in coming to this position
is you have to have the initiative.
- If you really want to be a hotshot,
and a good hotshot, you have to be ready to go 24/7
for about six months a year.
- If you are gonna be a wildland firefighter,
you need to be in shape, you need to be
physically, mentally, emotionally fit
and ready to do really hard work.
Firefighting is tough, it's dirty.
- You gotta have a mental toughness.
You're gonna face some adversity.
You know, sometimes you might be there 30 days,
where all you really have is nature.
Can you survive in that?
- I know how to deal with adversity,
because I dealt with it my whole life.
- This career enabled my confidence,
so some of my crew members, they said,
"Girl, I have a lot of respect for you."
I said, "Why do you say that for?"
"Because we thought you was gonna give up!"
- What keeps me coming back to work every day,
because it's something new,
and then I love the people that I work with.
- The camaraderie that you get
from being out there with a common mission,
with people who are as passionate as you are about it,
it's something that you take with you
for the rest of your life.
- I had some counselors at school
that decided to tell me that I had too much potential
to waste, and to go to college, so
I went to Southern University.
- My degree is in forestry science,
and I got a minor in business.
- Went back to school, got a two-year degree in forestry.
- You know, many fire crews, they try to accommodate
college kids when they're off during the summer,
so, while they're doing their course work,
it's an excellent summer job.
- It's definitely given me an opportunity
to do stuff I never thought I'd do.
I wasn't supposed to be able to read and write,
and go get a degree, and I did all those things, so
it's really about your own passion.
- Being a Native American in the USDA Forest Service
has taught me to provide for future generations.
- I don't care if you're a female, a male,
whatever race, gender, creed, sexual orientation,
it doesn't make any difference.
You need to have a passion for natural resources,
for helping people, for making the outdoors
better for the next generation.
- There's a favorite quote that I like
out of a book that is, I believe it's from Teddy Roosevelt,
that says, "I'll never feel old
"as long as I have a forest to be young in."
And that's, I keep that in my mind
with everything that I go to.
- As human beings we're always growing.
If we're not growing, one guy always said,
"If we're not growing, we're dying."
So, if we're not growing,
you're not never really improving yourself.
- I never knew anything about wildland fire.
I was not exposed to that.
I come from a background,
my mother worked fast food, retail.
If someone tell you, you can't do this,
you need to go and explore the world.
Be adventurous.
- If you got the toughness to fight through
personal battles, or whatever you've got going on,
this is a rewarding job, because you feel wanted,
you feel needed, and if you give us
everything you've got, you'll fit right in,
and you're gonna feel part of something pretty darn special.