Paving the way for future female firefighters

These days, Charise Sherratt answers to only one name: grandma, and she proudly spoils all five of her grandchildren.

However, before she ever got that title, Sherratt had another identity. 

"I was just a lot of fun," she said. 

In her 20s, Sherratt was working as a hairstylist. However, on a rainy day, she witnessed a motorcycle accident. The former lifeguard ran to help until the rescuers arrived. 

"At that moment, it looked like a ballet to me," she said. 

Firefighters and paramedics, working in perfect concert to save a man's life. It was then that she found her calling. 

"I will never be happy again in my life if I don't do what I saw those men doing last night," she recalled telling herself. 

However, navigating her way to become a firefighter wasn't easy.

"I would be the only woman there," Sherratt said. 

She was fit, smart and hardworking. However, after a year and a half at a local department, she felt unwanted and decided to move on to another. 

"When I landed in Long Beach, it was the greatest thing that ever happened," Sherratt said. 

In 1989, Sherratt was the second female firefighter hired by the Long Beach Fire Department. She remembered that her presence ruffled some feathers at Station 17. 

"There were a lot of wives at the fire station that were really unhappy about having a female," Sherratt said. 

Then, there was a bathroom problem: there were none for women. She said she hid in closets and changed her clothes. 

After getting married, Sherratt was the first to become a mother in the department. 

"The first baby, everybody was just in shock," she recalled. "'How dare she? I can't believe this.'"

She essentially invented the "modified duty" and "maternity leave" policies for the department. Eventually, her colleagues came around. 

"By the second baby, they gave me a baby shower," Sherratt said. 

Her favorite moments were when she was able to bring her kids to work. As the years went on, the department welcomed more women, who came in more prepared and less outcast. 

"These are all the women I worked with," she said. "It's just a really inspirational group of ladies."

After 25 years, Sherratt retired from the department in 2014. Years later, she returned to Station 17 to see her son embarking on his own career with the department. He's been a Long Beach probationary firefighter for the past four months. 

"A lot of these people learned from my mom and now I get an opportunity to learn from them," Zachary Sherratt said. 

Only 5% of career firefighters are women, according to the National Fire Protection Association. However, Chief Dennis Buchanan hopes more women see examples like Sherratt and join the service. 

"For a female candidate to come in and say my mother or my father worked for the Long Beach Fire Department, and I'm going to follow their footsteps, that is going to be a great day for us," Buchanan said. 

Thanks to Sherratt, Long Beach made strides to accommodate women including turning the storage closet where she spent changing her clothes into a women's bathroom. 

"That's what you call progress," she said. "The reason I'm a firefighter is because I never quit. I just kept going until I was successful."