It was a dream born in fire. Andrea Peterson was five when she and her mother were trapped on the ledge (窗台) of a burning building.
"Throw the kid down!" said one of the firemen below, and little Andrea leaped into lifesaving arms and a life-long ambition: She wanted to fight fires like her rescuers did.
She told that to the men who had saved her, and they laughed good-naturedly the way grown-ups do when a kid says they want to be an astronaut or a sports star. But this was back in a time when little girls weren't even allowed to fantasize about such grand goals.
"You'll be a good mommy," the firemen told her, "you'll be a good teacher, maybe you'll be a nurse, but you can never be a fireman."
And then, as it tends to do, life sidelined her dreams. She was studying for a degree in aviation (航空) technology — the only female in her class — and that's where she met her husband, Dennis.
Later, Dennis was diagnosed with cancer, and Peterson spent 31 years caring for him. At 61, she went on an ambulance ride-along. It turned out to be a life-and-death situation, and Peterson felt that long-ago childhood calling. She earned her emergency medical technician license and responded to fire calls with the ambulance. She found that her years of tending to Dennis had prepared her for dealing with various hurts and ills.
After a year, she told her boss she wanted to be a firefighter.
The fact that everyone else in her training unit was between 18 and 21 didn't stop her. She passed the written test, she cleared the physical and, finally, that little girl's dream became a reality.
