Tubac's first female Fire Chief to retire

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — Tubac Fire Chief Cheryl Horvath is no stranger to breaking barriers and being the first. Horvath is Tubac's first female Fire Chief and has spent the past 30 years working in the fire industry.

With her retirement on the horizon, KGUN 9's Denelle Confair sat down with her and takes a look back at her career. From helping in the response to Tucson's January 8th mass shooting, to helping young women continue to break barriers, she hopes her retirement will leave room for the next generation to continue to fill the gaps and make the fire industry more inclusive.

Horvath started her career in 1992 in a class surrounded with men. She was one of four women in her fire academy for Illinois Fire.

"I had an Academy instructor in 1992, right before graduation say what do you want your legacy to be?" Horvath said. "Well, I obviously hadn't thought about it at the time. I was still worried about tying knots and pulling hose loads, but you know I thought, well I want to make a difference."

After moving to Tucson in 2007, she became a Division Chief at Northwest Fire. Where she would later help with the response on Jan. 8, a mass shooting, leaving six people dead and injuring 13 others, including then Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

"We had new medics that had responded on the scene as a matter of fact, some of them helping Gabby Giffords out, and so they were... shook up," Horvath said.

Reflecting back on that day she says it hit hard, not only personally but professionally.

"After the initial scene, making sure that we had a presence at all of the funerals, that was really really important," Horvath said.

Chief Horvath would then continue on to climb more than ladders in her career as she broke major barriers as a female firefighter.

"For over 30 years I've always had to live up to a higher standard. I've always been evaluated, and frankly judged differently than most of the people that I work with," Horvath said. "And I don't carry that around like a bag of rocks. It's just become kind of part of my DNA."

Her first official Fire Chief job taking her to Mountain Vista Fire in 2016, ultimately becoming Tubac's first female Fire Chief in 2018. Although she says it wasn't without having to prove her worth.

"If we had chiefs committees and they're looking for a secretary, I'm not going to raise my hand to take minutes. That's not going to happen," Horvath said.

Leading a rural fire department didn't come without challenges. She says they had to adjust to fewer resources while still serving a wide ranging community in Santa Cruz county. A county which once had the highest COVID positivity rate in Arizona.

"Had to lead a department through a pandemic. And I tell my firefighters that, you know, don't underestimate what we just went through," Horvath said. "Like there's so much resiliency that we've learned about the department in ourselves as a result of this experience."

One of her proudest moments helping launch Camp Fury. The girls camp aims at canceling out the divide when it comes to women in predominately male dominated trades.

"We thought you know what, let's just try a camp for girls and let's just see what happens," Horvath said. "And so we ran the camp the first year we had 14 Girls, and it was an opportunity for us to try to feed more young ladies into the pipeline."

To date more than 600 girls in southern Arizona have attended Camp Fury and now it's being emulated throughout the country.

With only weeks away from retiring, she hopes her departure will inspire the next generation.

"Whoever the next fire chief is, you're going to make mistakes, learn from it, grow from it, you know, do it better next time," Horvath said. "And I would say that to any other officer that works in the field of public safety."