When Engine 34 left the Pasadena Fire Station on Tuesday with an entirely female crew inside, it officially made history.
As ABC 7 reported, that was the first time in the station’s history that a crew made up entirely of female fire fighters had ever been staffed to work the same shift together.
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The crew was under the command of Capt. Tricia Rodriguez, who snapped a pic to commemorate the historic moment.
“FIRST all-female crew in history of Pasadena Fire Department riding together on Engine 34,” the photo caption reads.
The team consisted of Rodriguez, firefighter-paramedic Nicole Olsen, firefighter Tawnie Johnson, and engineer Christina Terrazas.
All four women only found out the night before that they were going to be working together the next day.
Rodriguez, who’s been a firefighter for 28 years, is no stranger to making history at the Pasadena station. Ten years ago she became the first female fire captain in department history. Now she’s done it again, this time with three other deserving ladies.
“This is the first time that all of the pieces have fallen into place,” she told Pasadena Now . “All the stars aligned.”
The women have worked together before, but never all on the same crew at the same time.
Unfortunately, the assignment is only temporary, and isn’t very likely to happen again. After completing the history-making 24-hour shift together, the ladies all returned to their regular assignments.
But the importance of the moment certainly wasn’t lost on any member of the crew, particularly Rodriguez.
Just one day prior, she’d remarked that it would be interesting if she could be part of an all-female crew at least once in her career.
As fate would have it, the next day she would be leading that very crew.
“The message to anyone is, if you have a dream or a vision, you can achieve it,” Rodriguez told ABC 7 . “This is something we have looked forward to growing up and we put a lot of effort into it. We trained, and we studied and we took the same test everybody else did and we didn’t give up.”
h/t: ABC 7 , Pasadena Now
