Like father, like daughter. The Seattle Fire Department's first dad/daughter duo

Captain Gordon Wolcott with the Seattle Fire Department knows retirement is around the corner. Before that, he had one job he did not want to miss — pinning a firefighter badge on his daughter, Raechel Ehlers.

“It’s still amazing to me, today, every time I go to work,” Wolcott said. “We work on the same shift, I know that when I come to work, she’s going to work. She just gets there earlier, because she’s newer … and throughout the day, if I go on a run, I’ll look at our status messaging board on the rig to see if she is out there on a run too,and generally, at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, if I’m on a run, she’s out there too. It’s almost like I have a partner in arms, and now she sees why I felt that way in the morning (growing up) and why I wasn't very nice.”

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Ehlers got her badge on March 7. Now, Wolcott and Ehlers are the Seattle Fire Department's first father-daughter firefighting duo. Ehlers now works in an aid car in downtown Seattle. Her goal is to work on a ladder truck, just like her dad did at the beginning of his career. They don’t work on the same crew, but they do hope that, one day, they can battle the same fire.

While talking with KUOW, it was clear that Wolcott and Ehlers took a similar path to the job.

Wolcott joined the Seattle Fire Department in 1992. He was 32, and married with three kids at the time. He became a lieutenant in 1997, then a captain in 2002. Nowadays, Wolcott is the captain of Engine 37 in West Seattle. Before the fire department, Wolcott had started a few small businesses, was a stay-at-home dad, and even was a powerlifter for a while.

Ehlers also took a scenic route to the Seattle Fire Department. She spent her teen years as a lifeguard in Seattle. After college, she took a job working on the administration side of Vashon Fire and Rescue. She was also a volunteer firefighter there. She also pitched in at the family business, the Vashon Theatre.

“My dad and my mom own a business on Vashon Island, they own the movie theater over there, so we worked together and I was in charge of the counter … and the captain doesn’t like getting orders, that’s what we learned very quickly,” Ehlers said. “Definitely some dynamic there, figuring out how to work together.”

“She told me to get out,” Wolcott said, explaining that he wasn’t filling drinks correctly, or fast enough.

“Yeah, I did tell him to get out,” she said.

“I got my feelings hurt a little bit, but she was right, she knew what she was doing,” he said.

Like her dad, Ehlers was an adult with kids when she felt a calling to the fire service. A couple moments got her to seriously think about joining up. First, she was in the car with her dad, en route to a ferry, when they saw an elderly man take a bad fall. They pulled over and provided aid until the fire department got there. The experience made an impression. Then, a second thing happened.

“I was working in an office for Vashon Fire and I had a rough day at the office,” Ehlers said. “And I’ve worked in the fire service, so I just thought, ‘Ya know, I think I could do this.’ I had done EMF, I had done some training, and danced back and forth with it. I just had that bad day at the office that made me go, ‘I’m gonna give it a try.’ And I’m really glad I did.”

She’s glad, not just because of working in the same department as her dad. Ehlers has gained a new perspective around her father, one that isn’t possible outside the service. She has memories of the firefighting family that her dad brought home. She has many fire uncles. She remembers her dad driving away in a fire engine, but she never have a concept of where that engine was going, what her dad was doing, and what he was going through.

“I think I get more and more proud and appreciative of my dad every day I am here,” Ehlers said. ”It’s been a gift to see this … he kind of went into a black hole when he went into work when I was a kid growing up. To step into this world with him and get to see him and how he is at work and hear more, I’m part of the club now in some ways … I have more of an understanding and an appreciation of the hardship and the struggle that comes from doing this job day in and day out. I’m more and more proud of him and the time he has put in for this job.”

She's got "mom magic"

For Ehlers, the new job is about more than just following her dad’s legacy. The Seattle Fire Department is striving to hire more women. She hopes her story can serve as an example.

"I’m a little older. I was a kid in the ’80s, early ’90s. There was still not a ton of women in the fire service as a little kid,” she recalled. “It wasn’t until my 20s when I started to see toys and action figures of women firefighters and stuff like that. So, I think the more exposure women can have to see that we belong at this job as well, and there’s a culture here that supports having strong women here, that’s inclusive culture, and there’s lots of opportunities in the fire department, especially in Seattle, for women to be successful.”

She says that as a cis-gendered woman, she was treated a certain way through life, “groomed to take care of people and navigate situations with a kind of softer way.” Now, she credits her experience as a mom as a source of strength for her job with SFD.

“Having kids, being a caretaker, being in jobs where I work with little kids, it’s an asset to be able to draw on those experiences when I’m working with patients, and being able to connect with people. The sooner I can build a rapport with a patient, the more comfortable they are, the better things go.”

“Some of the people I work with say, ‘Oh, you got mom magic.’”

KUOW's Dyer Oxley contributed to this article.