Woman Climbs Ladder to San Jose’s Asst. Chief Position

The application for the San Jose firefighting job wasn’t even meant for her. She was just picking it up for her younger brother.

But as Teresa Deloach Reed read over the job description and qualifications, she thought, “Hey, I could do this.”

And that’s how Deloach Reed, the department’s new assistant chief, got into the firefighting business 23 years ago.

“I never thought about the dangers of being a firefighter,” she says now. “I just saw it as an adventurous job. Something I had the physical capability of doing, something that sounded exciting.”

In those days, many fire departments wouldn’t hire women, and San Jose had only a couple. But Deloach Reed was uniquely equipped to succeed. As a phone-company installer, she knew how to climb ladders, lug heavy equipment, crawl around in dark, confined spaces. And having grown up with seven brothers, she knew how to hold her own with a bunch of guys.

“Sometimes I come off as quiet,” she says, “but I can stand my ground.”

When I called her the other day to talk about her career and her promotion, I asked her to tell me stories from the war of the sexes. I’d heard complaints over the years from women firefighters about sharing locker rooms with the guys, having to deal with hostility and resentment from members of the traditionally all-male club. Like being the only girl in a frat house.

Deloach Reed, 51, known for being unflappable and straightforward, didn’t want to go there. As the fire department’s highest-ranking woman, let alone African-American woman, she made it clear that she wants to focus on the future, not the past.

But surely she could talk about when she was promoted to captain in 1994 and was put in charge of an all-male company. I could share stories from my days as a young newspaper editor, trying to get the veteran male reporters to take me seriously. Back then, firehouses were even more estrogen-deficient than newsrooms.

But Deloach Reed had only praise for her first company.

“Those guys were great,” she said. “They took me in. I recognized their experience; they recognized that I was new and still trying to learn.”

San Jose Mercury News