In black uniforms complete with ties, a group of female firefighting trainees — most formerly incarcerated — marched beneath rolling green hills near Las Virgenes Road on a recent Monday.

Among them, Elizabeth Melendez stood out. At 45, she’s older than her peers, and she was a firefighter while serving time.

When she was released in 2018, no programs like the one she is a part of now existed. Finding herself in a similar environment as before she served time, she wanted to find a new path forward.

Last year, she decided to change her life by going back to the job she once knew well. It was a long process, but at the end of March, she began training to be a firefighter again.

“It makes me want to conquer this because they’re doing so much to help us,” she said as a new member of Los Angeles County’s Justice, Care and Opportunities Department firefighter training program, which provides housing, food and a stipend for trainees. “Being the product of my environment, me trying to do this program and still living in the environment that I was living in, I’m telling you I wouldn’t be able to make it.”

Once Camp David Gonzalez, a juvenile detention center, the Santa Monica Mountains campus has been transformed into a fire training center. The trainees, formerly incarcerated people or those impacted by the justice system because of family members’ sentences or homelessness, or former foster youth, were supported at an open house that Monday by a crowd of current women inmates from Malibu Conservation Camp 13 as the trainees demonstrated their firefighting skills.

Seated alongside the inmates were county leaders, including the district attorney and a county supervisor, and the trainees’ families and friends.

The Justice, Care and Opportunities Department, a county division dedicated to a “continuum of care” for those affected by the justice system, has transformed the former detention center into a residential training site for firefighting.

The all-female cohort currently training is the second group to go through the program overall and first all-female group of the department’s firefighting training program. Many of the trainees who were incarcerated fought fires during that period of their lives.

More than a job

One day, Melendez heard from a friend who had been through the Ventura Training Center’s fire academy, a program that inspired L.A. County’s.

“He went and he changed his life. He went into the all men’s Ventura firefighting training center and he called me one day and he’s like, ‘Hey Lizzo, do you still want to do firefighting?’ ” Melendez recalled. “I was like, I’m 45 years old, can I still do it?’ Come to find out, if you’re capable, if you’re still fit, you can still do it.”

Melendez passed the physical fitness portions and got into the program, and now is training every day. She has earned two certifications since the program started, building on everything she learned when she fought fires at the Malibu camp. The program is proof to Melendez that you can change your life at any age, she said, not just an opportunity for younger adults.

The L.A. County training program is residential, providing housing for the trainees, as well as food and a stipend. The total support the trainees receive is one of the factors pushing Melendez to work as hard as possible.

Other trainees spoke of the program as a new beginning and a place of purpose.

“I spent my whole life taking from the communities I lived in, taking from people, taking from my family, I just want to give back,” Tiffany Flint said. “I want to give back to others, I want to be of service to the communities I come from.”

Someone suggested firefighting to Flint on her last day in prison, and she became motivated to look into ways to pursue it, eventually joining the L.A. County program and finding community and a team in the other trainees.

Laquisha Johnson applied to be a part of a fire camp while incarcerated, finding purpose responding to wildfires, medical calls, house fires and motor vehicle accidents, realizing that firefighting was more than a job, but a way to find “discipline, compassion and a deep understanding of how precious and fragile life really is.”

When she was released, she wanted to pursue firefighting, but couldn’t find a position.

“When I was released at 24, I had all my certifications, $200 and a dream. I bought interview clothes, built a resume and caught the bus to the firehouse in Vermont. I was honest about my past, but the answer was no,” Johnson said.

In the 11 years since, she returned to school, volunteered with incarcerated youth and worked in advocacy.

“Now, at 35, I’m becoming a firefighter again, but this time not by chance, but by choice,” she said.

‘A responsibility like no other’

One alum of the first cohort, Cade Dawson, who now works on an engine with Cal Fire in Mendocino, arrived at the training grounds for the demonstration. In his uniform, Dawson exemplified the goal of the program – to produce a fully trained firefighter who gets hired by an agency.

Nearly all of the trainees from the first cohort were hired by Cal Fire.

Dawson, who grew up in Pasadena in foster care, spoke to the current trainees, detailing his experiences responding to calls.

“I take this uniform so seriously,” Dawson said. “This is a responsibility like no other.”

The work of incarcerated firefighters received attention during Los Angeles’ intense January wildfires, igniting debate on social media about the firefighters’ pay and sometimes their inability to get hired as firefighters after serving time in prison.

Inmate firefighters are paid between $5.80 and $10.24 a day and earn an extra dollar an hour when working on an emergency, such as an active wildfire. A bill introduced by California Assemblymember Issac Bryan in the wake of January’s blazes proposed an increase in these firefighters’ pay.

Programs such as the Justice, Care and Opportunities Department’s in L.A. County and the Ventura Training Center’s are the only places outside of incarceration dedicated to teaching firefighting skills to those impacted by the justice system, according to retired LA Superior Court Judge Songhai Armstead, the chair of the department.

On Monday, Captain Ladale Hayes led the trainees in a demonstration of some of the skills they have learned. Also formerly incarcerated, he credits firefighting with saving his life and leading him to his position now, helping others move toward career opportunities in the field.

Hayes now runs Operation Flame, a community organization dedicated to training disadvantaged youth and young adults and people of color, which has partnered with the county’s training program.

“These ladies train all day, they’re built for it,” Hayes said as the trainees displayed how to take hoses off trucks and extinguish fires.

The future of the department’s program includes a new dormitory that will be able to house up to 80 trainees, more trainees applying to Cal Fire and possibly new pathways for trainees to work with the Los Angeles Fire Department and the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

As the trainees donned their fire gear and their captain spoke of the wildland firefighting skills, hand line construction and engine drills they have been practicing, the orange jumpsuit-clad, incarcerated women of the Malibu fire camp gave some of the loudest cheers from the crowd.

“For those of you in orange,” said Avi Bernand, spokesperson for the Justice, Care and Opportunities Department, “I hope to see you at this camp very soon.”