CINCINNATI — Ella Breitfelder didn’t grow up with dreams of becoming a firefighter. And she says she doesn’t remember the family pictures her father shares with me.
He shows me one inside an emergency vehicle where she's wearing headphones almost as big as she is. And another where all of her siblings are sitting on the front of an engine with her dad.
But when Ella wanted to change career paths, she tells me her father had a suggestion.
“I thought, why not? And I loved it,” Ella said, who graduated from the Cincinnati Fire Department’s training school this summer. “I can’t see myself doing anything else.”
Steve Breitfelder is an assistant fire chief at the department. In December, he’ll retire after more than 35 years of service. And before his last day, he had one request: to do a ride-along with his daughter, one of the department’s newest recruits.
After a shift change on a cold November morning, they wash department vehicles together.
“You missed a spot,” Steve said.
He laughs.
“It’s been 30 years since I rode in the back of one of these,” Steve said.
“You know what that means?” Ella said. "You’re old."
Watch a father’s final firehouse day with his daughter in the video below:
Because Ella is new, the first order of the day is a drill. So her crew in West Price Hill loads up their gear into a replacement truck. That’s what they’ve been doing most of the morning, because of a radiator problem in their normal vehicle.
But when they get to the drill, and unroll all the hose, water doesn't pump through it. Instead, some leaks off the back. Ella flips the nozzle and nothing happens. Soon, Steve is making calls. His department oversees the vehicle fleet.
“You wanted to record a typical day at the firehouse. You’re getting it,” Steve tells me. “That’s the key to being a firefighter, you have to be ready to change.”
The crew returns to the station and changes vehicles. This one is headed to maintenance, and they’re headed to buy groceries for lunch and dinner.
Steve follows behind. I ask him how it feels for his daughter to be following in his footsteps. He pauses before answering.
“I can’t even find the words to explain it,” Steve said. “Very proud.”
He looks like he might cry. And then there’s another pause. He opens the door.
“Let’s go inside,” Steve said.
Back at the station, there’s no time to unload groceries. A call comes in about a 22-year-old woman with chest pain. In the truck, Ella puts on gloves. A medic unit is behind them.
Her father follows her inside the home.
“Just go ahead and relax for me,” Ella tells the patient. “I’m going to go into your shirt and get you hooked up to some stickers, okay?”
A few minutes later, Ella pushes a stretcher into the patient's driveway. The patient is eventually taken to the hospital.
“It makes you want to get better every single day,” Ella tells me. “It’s still hard, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
At the station later that morning, she and her dad cook lunch together.
“He means a lot,” Ella says of her father. “I really just wanted to make him proud.”
