Where are you from? I am from Southern Spain, originally from Sevilla.

How did you get to Jackson? I started coming here as a J-1 student. I was doing a year abroad in school in Sweden and one of my best friends from college said, ‘Hey, I went to a water park in New Jersey on this j-1 visa, and it was a lot of fun.’ The experience of going international and making money and practicing English sounded amazing and my friend said let’s go to the Tetons next year. I was like, where is that? I had no idea where Wyoming was…but because I was in Sweden, he did all my paperwork and he booked all the flights. So really I just looked at the map and knew that it was above Colorado and ended up here and spent one summer in 2013. I returned seasonally until 2018 and I’ve been living here pretty much full-time ever since.

What made you want to join the department? It was a goal of mine to join the department for probably the last five years or so. It just seemed like such a good way to give back to the community that I was living in. It’s exciting training, and it’s always something new. There are a lot of doctors in my family and I didn’t choose that career path so maybe I always felt like I was going to lack a lot of knowledge that I’ve always counted on. Growing up with my mom, my uncle, my aunt all being doctors, it was nice never having to go to the hospital for anything. So I realized, maybe if I get my EMT and get involved in emergency medicine, then I can further my career and use that knowledge to help a family member or someone else who might need it in the future.

Did you have a personal background in fire or EMS or medicine? Not at all…I’m completely starting from scratch. 

What are your current certifications? Fire one, Hazmat A & O, Redcard, EVOC, and EMT.

What are your future goals in the department? Probably get to a level where I can recruit more people into the volunteer program. I really want to stay up here in Moran and go on calls over here. Obviously whenever there’s a big event down in town, I want to be able to provide help there. Fire Two is probably on my horizon now. I want to volunteer for as long as I’m here. I don’t foresee my company denying that, so even if I get promoted, I’ll still keep my volunteer status. And if we eventually move to town, then that would mean moving to a different station. But as long as I’m not leaving here, I’ll stay as a volunteer. 

What is it that you do for work? I’m the director of food and beverage for Grand Teton Lodge Company and I also support Jenny and Colter Bay a little bit.

What do you do in your free time? Um…I volunteer. This is a big time commitment: the training  and the academy and the reading. I’m also getting a certification for wines, and I spend time with my family, and I’m trying to learn French. I love walking with my dog. I wish I could fish more in the summer and I’ve left hiking a little behind but I used to love going hiking. With all these time commitments from volunteering and the more demanding job, I find myself with less time for leisure.

What would you say is your favorite part of volunteering? I think it touches on a lot of things if I had to summarize it. I would say that an ability to give back to the community. There are a lot of things I take for granted here too, like I come from a system that’s state-driven in Spain. We don’t think about these things. When I’m trying to explain these situations to my colleagues or my friends in Spain, they just don’t understand that you can volunteer as a firefighter. That’s impossible in their minds. So there’s a lot of things in this societal structure that are not given, so I think it’s a way of contributing to this society.

What would you say is the most challenging part? The most challenging part for me I would say is that it is a challenge for me to be completely new to fire or emergency medical services or anything like that. Like I went to school for business management and supply chain and law and I ended up managing hospitality. So these are very foreign concepts to me, right? From the social sciences and applied sciences to medicine…but I think the most challenging has been the content, some of the knowledge, and really understanding all of it. I think that you guys are doing an amazing job in trying to solve this with the foundation, but it can be intimidating going into the department as a new person in a field that you have no idea about with people who have been here for so long and are pretty close knit. So coming into that kind of environment with zero knowledge in trying to breach that gap has been one of the most challenging parts. 

What advice would you give new recruits? Don’t be afraid of doing things. You’re in a pretty controlled environment, even if it seems challenging or foreign to you. Ask questions and don’t feel that any question is stupid and then don’t be afraid to get dirty. Get in there!

Is there anything that you wish you had known when you started? I definitely underestimated the time commitment of the academy. It was definitely more of a time commitment than I thought; it was probably double what I thought it would be. 

What would you say is the most valuable skill or trait to have? Inspecting an SCBA, of course. And looking at things more critically. It just gives you a different way of thinking about buildings and streets or where you’re going to choose to live. This gives you a completely new perspective on a lot of things that are very important that people overlook. Or using a chainsaw! I never cut anything with a chainsaw before.

What do you think that you bring to the department? Well, I bring completely bilingual Spanish. I also think that coming from completely outside of the fire service, I bring in fresh eyes and a new perspective. I think that it’s important to have people that don’t really know what they’re doing looking at your issues so that you’re getting outside of that tunnel vision that some people can get into in their professions.

Do you have someone in the department who you really look up to? I think I would probably say Mac from Station 4 is someone that I always look up to for questions and answers. He’s made it very easy for me, he’s very approachable and he is always in the spirit of teaching. Obviously Captain Sullivan will always be a reference for me in the future as well.