from Family Circle, October 6/98

women who make a difference

To the Rescue

"It was 90 degrees out and the fire

had spread to two acres."

  By Janna L. Graber

 It was 6 A.M. on a brisk fall morning and 39-year-old Cindi Shank was fast asleep -- until her pager went off. In moments, she was out of bed, dressed and driving the mile to the local fire station. There she donned her protective fire gear and started up the station's rescue truck.

As the volunteer fire chief of Colorado's Golden Gate Canyon, Cindi is used to living by her pager, and that morning she knew that a life was depending on her. But reaching the accident she'd been called to was no easy  task. To get there, Cindi had to maneuver the rescue truck down the canyon's steep, twisting roads. The unpaved streets were so narrow that at times Cindi's truck came dangerously close to the unguarded edge—and the 200-foot drop-off below.

As Cindi neared the scene, she saw skid marks leading up to the edge of the mountain. Minutes earlier an 18-year-old boy had lost control of his car. With no guardrails to stop him, he'd gone over the cliff and plunged down into the canyon.

At the scene Cindi, a trained emergency medical technician (EMT), grabbed her equipment and made her way across the rocky terrain. The young man had been thrown from the car and was lying in a pool of blood and gasoline. His car lay mangled at the bottom of the hillside. Fighting nausea from the gas fumes, Cindi Knelt at the young man's side. Nearly all of his facial bones were crushed. She couldn't tell what he looked like or even how old he was.

"Please don't let go of my hand," the frightened boy cried, clinging to Cindi. She held tight to him and with her free hand, worked to stop his bleeding. She talked to him the whole time, trying to calm him. When he was stabilized, Cindi and the volunteers who'd met her at the scene carried the boy to a waiting helicopter.

A few months later the boy stopped by the fire station, bringing a box of doughnuts as a token of his gratitude. He burst into tears as he thanked Cindi and the other volunteers for saving his life.

A simple thank you is all the compensation Cindi needs for saving lives. Elected volunteer fire chief in January, she spends over 20 hours a week protecting the 750 residents of her small mountain community. In an area prone to lightning fires and car accidents, Cindi and the other volunteers respond to about 100 calls each year -- and not just fires. They also handle search-and-rescue operations and requests for emergency medical assistance.

As one of an estimated 110 women firefighters in the country, Cinidi has her work cut out for her. Fortunately, she has 17 years of firefighting experience to draw on.

Cindi grew up in the mountain town of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. "Even as a teenager, Cindi took care of others," recalls her mother; Wanda Hudson. "She would gather all the neighborhood kids and take them skiing. Everyone knew she was reliable and the other parents trusted her."

After college Cindi trained as an EMT. She enjoyed the challenge of emergency response work and decided to try firefighting.

While volunteering at a fire station in Durango, Colorado, Cindi met her future husband, Bill Shank, a professional firefighter/paramedic. "Hat/way through our first date he got paged on an emergency call," remembers Cindi, who married Bill in 1982. "After our wedding we went off in a fire truck."

Over the next nine years Cindi worked as an EMT, and then as a police and fire dispatcher. All the while she continued to donate her firefighting skills to volunteer stations. In 1991 Cindi became a full-time firefighter, taking a paid captain's job at a station near Denver.

Cindi is not your average firefighter, emphasizes husband Bill. "Cindi brings a compassionate approach to firefighting that is unique. She sees the benefit of addressing the victim's emotional needs."

Bill recalls a time when Cindi stayed with the family of a missing suicidal man for hours. She brought them coffee and tried to keep their spirits up until the man was found.

I just relate to people and try to help them through a bad time," says Cindi. "The emotional aspect can make or break a situation. If someone is in emotional distress, it's harder to help them physically."

In 1995 Cindi made the difficult decision to leave her paid job so that she could be home for her children— Sarah, 10, and Cody, 7.

Her break from firefighting didn't last long, though. Cindi couldn't ignore the desperate need of the small volunteer fire department in the canyon where she lives. 'They needed someone with experience and I knew I could help," she says. "You can't always depend on the 'other person' to do the job. Sometimes you have to be that 'other person.' "

For almost three years, Cindi taught plumbers, accountants and stay-at-home moms the skills they needed to be effective firefighters. In January they elected her chief.

As the first woman chief at the fire station, Cindi believes she brings a unique attitude to the position. "I have a real compassion for the people doing the job, as well as for the people being helped."

Cindi's genuine interest in those she aids doesn't end when the emergency is over. "I try to call the hospital or send a card that shows we care." After all, many of the people Cindi helps are her own neighbors.

Everyone takes care of each other up here," Cindi says. "It's your neighbors who come when you need help."

Cindi has also been praised for her leadership. "Being a fire chief means more than just knowing how to put out fires," says Lance Platter, Golden Gate's former fire chief. "Cindi has great people skills and she's good at pulling a team together."

A recent forest fire tested all of her skills. The first on the scene, Cindi watched the smoke column grow and feared the worst. When eight firefighters from a neighboring volunteer station arrived, Cindi organized them to hike up the mountain, carrying 45pound packs of water on their backs. "It was 90 degrees out and the fire had spread to two acres," recalls Cindi. "It took us four hours to put it out." Former chief Platter credits Cindi's "ability to know each volunteer's skills and training" as crucial to extinguish ing that fire.

"Cindi is focused and gets things done," says volunteer medical director Sheri Ransom. "On a scene it's very chaotic, but Cindi is always organized. I feel better when she's there."

Knowing that her actions can have life-or-death consequences, Cindi is dedicated to improving the station and updating old equipment. "We don't have fire hydrants up here," she says, "so we have to carry water in our tanker trucks. We depend on that equipment"

With a budget of only $35,000 a year, new equipment is hard to come by. But through grants and fund-raising, the station brings in about $15,000 in additional funds each year. Some of that money has gone toward the purchase of used firefighting vehicles in good condition that are a big improvement over what they had "Our last truck was so bad that you could see the road through the rotted-out floorboards," says Cindi. "You just hoped that the brakes worked."

Cindi's next endeavor is to establish a second station further down the canyon. "We've got to have another station to shorten our response time," she says. "We have the land, now we're trying to add two new trucks."

Cindi's work doesn't stop there. When not responding to emergency calls, she talks to juvenile fire setters and prepares for an annual fire prevention program. She's even begun an Explorer troop to teach area youngsters basic safety skills.

In a job where lives are at risk, Cindi can't help but be affected by what she sees. "Anything with children really gets to me," she says. "But some times it helps to talk about a call with someone outside the situation, like my mom or a friend. They remind me that it's normal to feel the way I do."

The satisfaction that Cindi gets from assisting people in need is what keeps her motivated. When a 78-year-old woman with Alzheimer's got lost in the hills one winter, Cindi and her colleagues were determined to find her. "We searched for her for three hours in the dark and freezing cold," says Cindi. "The mountains were covered with scrub oak and deep snow. I was afraid we wouldn't get to her in time, but we finally found her in one of the canyons. It was the best feeling in the world to be able to tell her husband that she was O.K."

Despite the long hours and stressful work, Cindi wouldn't choose to spend her time any other way. "I like being able to help in an emergency situation," she says. "Sometimes I'm the only one there on the scene, and it's a good feeling to make a difference in someone's life."