Sometimes pain can offer a path to finding your passion. When I was sentenced to prison for ten years and four months in 2006, I never expected I would find a path to healing through, of all things, becoming a wildland firefighter. I never imagined that I would serve my sentence as one of the “Malibu Hotshots,” living at the Malibu CC13 Fire Camp, and that I would move on to a career full of fulfilment and even redemption.

Before prison, I was a privileged white girl from Southern California. I lived like a princess and did whatever I wanted to do. All of that changed when I was incarcerated. In prison, in the Coachella Valley, I reached out to fire camp to get my sentence reduced and be closer to my family in Malibu. Little did I know how much fire training would change my life. I became someone who could work under dangerous conditions, who could clear a fire line to rob a wildfire of fuel, who could bust through brush taller than me and who could hike never ending inclines surrounding by smoke and flames.

After almost two years of working under the supervision of some of Los Angeles County’s finest firefighters, I began to work just like they did. I found strength and purpose I never knew I had.

Before going to prison, I stole from my community. As a firefighter, I made amends. Where I once caused pain and let down everyone close to me, I now fought fire to protect people and the places they loved. I held myself accountable and, on those fire lines, took up the hard work to go beyond just saying, “I’m sorry.”

Fast forward 10 years, and I am fortunate to remain actively involved with the incredible people we call inmate firefighters. Today I work for an innovative program that began three years ago as collaborative effort between CAL FIRE, California Department of Corrections, California Conservation Corp and The Anti-Recidivism Coalition. It is an 18-month program that gives previously incarcerated firefighters the opportunity for further training so that they can develop professional careers in firefighting.

The carceral system does a tremendous amount of harm, unjustly locking people up, separating people from everything they know and love, creating generational trauma and impacting Black families at a highly disproportionate rate. It increases strain on already damaged relationships, and punishes people for their mistakes, instead of helping them try to improve and redirect their lives.

For many incarcerated firefighters, fire camp offers a critical opportunity at a very difficult time in their lives. They, in turn, help to save California from the devastation of wildfires.

As many as one-third of our state’s wildland firefighters are incarcerated. California relies heavily on these workers and still has a long way to go towards compensating them fairly. New laws are making it possible for formerly incarcerated firefighters – the very people I work with – to have their records expunged to ease their path to professional firefighting and EMT careers. Yet there is still much to be done towards supporting firefighters both in prison and on the other side of the gate.

Today, my office at the Ventura Training Center sits between the offices of our Fire Chief and our Parole Supervisor. Instead of being kept under lock and key, I am trusted as a colleague, sitting at the same table, working together, sharing ideas, making plans, fulfilling visions.

I have the honor of seeing the formerly incarcerated people I work with embrace their freedom as “real firefighters” in uniform, in engines, on the lines. These men and women do so much more than earn certificates and take up gainful employment with California’s many fire crews. Like me, they rebuild their lives. They take the idea of “living amends” to the next level and work on the difficult job of healing themselves, their communities and their loved ones. They are leaders and mentors, no longer defined by their worst mistakes or their past.

Not only are our participants remaking their life histories, they are part of something much bigger. Our agency partnerships are unique, and I have a front row seat to seeing how people, and possibly institutions, can change for the better. This is an honor I do not take lightly.