New to the fire district but not to Barstow: Area resident says seeing a familiar face helps others in emergencies

Jamie Williams had hardly settled into her new job as a captain at the Barstow Fire Protection District when the first call came. It was Monday morning, 30 seconds after her first shift at the station started and she was riding out on a medical aid call with her new crew.

The job, the station and the uniform may be new to Williams, but when she rolled out on her first call of the day, she was on familiar ground. Even the crew, with which Williams had worked with before on mutual aid calls, was familiar.

“I’ve been working side by-side with these guys for 10 years,” she said.

Born and raised in Barstow and now living in Hinkley, Williams has wanted to work in her home town since she began her firefighting career 10 years ago in Hinkley.

“I honestly didn’t think I would get the opportunity,” she said.

Williams was introduced to firefighting at 17 as an Explorer at the Hinkley station of the San Bernardino County Fire Department. She had never thought about the fire service until a school friend mentioned the Explorers program, which allows high school age teens to experience different public safety careers, to her in class one day. Williams said she was entranced from the first time she stepped into the station.

“I was like five years old again, looking at a fire truck,” she said. “… From that day on, you couldn’t get me away from there.”

Riding back of an engine from her first call at the Hinkley station — a traffic collision on Highway 58 — Williams made a decision. A class of 1998 graduate of Barstow High School, she had a dorm room waiting for her at Cal State San Bernardino and a plan to study business. Coming back from the scene of the collision, where she had worked traffic control, Williams realized she did not want to leave the fire service. Instead, she enrolled at Barstow Community College to get her emergency medical technician certification and joined the Hinkley station as a paid-call firefighter.

west coast 911 news source - Desert Dispatch