Alysia Reiner isn’t someone who grew up dreaming of becoming a firefighter. But she notes that dreams often change, a fact she shares with her teen daughter. “It’s funny having a 14-year-old now because just the other day she told me, ‘I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” And I said ‘You don’t have to know, and it can change.’ That’s the fun thing about life, right? We get to keep on having new, awesome experiences and dreams and then go live the dream.”
In the case of firefighting, that occupation was never on Reiner’s dream list, but that changed when the pandemic hit. “Over Covid, I lived in Saltaire, Fire Island. In Fire Island, there are no cars, hospital, doctor, or police,” she says. “All there is is volunteer fire, and because I felt like that community saved my life — physically, emotionally, and spiritually, during the pandemic — I felt like I deeply wanted to give back to my community, so I joined volunteer fire.” That sparked her mid-life career shift that’s nothing short of heroic.
“What I didn’t know is what it would entail,” she admits. She ended up having to train the same way as the FDNY, and her instructors would say, “Fire doesn’t care if you’re a volunteer.”