CINCINNATI — Ella Breitfelder didn’t grow up with dreams of becoming a firefighter. And she says she doesn’t remember the family pictures her father shares with me.

He shows me one inside an emergency vehicle where she's wearing headphones almost as big as she is. And another where all of her siblings are sitting on the front of an engine with her dad.

But when Ella wanted to change career paths, she tells me her father had a suggestion.

“I thought, why not? And I loved it,” Ella said, who graduated from the Cincinnati Fire Department’s training school this summer . “I can’t see myself doing anything else.”

Steve Breitfelder is an assistant fire chief at the department. In December, he’ll retire after more than 35 years of service. And before his last day, he had one request: to do a

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