From Incarcerated Firefighter to Hometown Hero: Joseph’s Journey

On January 7, 2025, a brush fire fueled by high winds ignited the Eaton Canyon area in Pasadena, California, forcing evacuations and turning entire subdivisions into ash.

The next day, while the amber peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains poked through the morning haze, and the charred towns in the dry valley mourned, a rookie firefighter named Joseph was deployed to Eaton to help extinguish wildfires that were consuming the neighborhood he had grown up in.

“I was born in San Gabriel Valley and used to ride my bike around Eaton,” the 41-year-old Joseph says. “During the wildfires, I walked around the streets with a chainsaw and cleared fallen trees. I had never seen anything like it before – it looked like a warzone.”

Joseph was a member of Firestorm Crew 6, a team of 20 firefighters from Chino that joined hundreds of other brave first responders in the fight to save homes and human lives. He was mostly like all the other firefighters around him – smart, highly trained, and physically fit.

Yet one thing set him apart from his peers: Joseph received his training while serving time in prison, and was hired by Firestorm after his release one year ago.

“Going back to the community that I'd taken so much from was one of the most surreal moments of my life,” says Joseph. “I felt so much pride being able to go back to the same neighborhoods I got arrested in and serve them as a firefighter.”

Raised by a single mother after his abusive father left the house early in his life, Joseph got hooked on drugs at the young age of 12. At 18, he went to jail for the first time, thus starting a decades-long connection to the criminal justice system, with substance abuse in the middle.

In 2019, while in custody at the San Bernardino County Jail, Joseph realized he needed to take a new direction. So he signed up for the Conservation Fire Camp, a controversial yet successful program that trains incarcerated men to respond to emergencies like wildfires and other natural disasters. Few would know it, but according to Mother Jones, around 35% of California firefighters are low-level prisoners.

Founded in 1915, the program saves California taxpayers $80 million annually. It is jointly operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDRC), the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), and the LA County Fire Department. Commonly known as fire camps, the 35 minimum-security facilities are located in 25 counties across California and staffed with correctional officers.

“The Fire Camp was the best time of my life, believe it or not. No high from drugs ever equaled the high of helping people,” Joseph says. “I felt a part of something bigger than myself, and I knew I wanted to be a firefighter for the rest of my life.”

During his six months of training, Joseph spent time in the classroom, exercised every morning, learned how to operate a chainsaw, and performed CPR. He trained hard every day to earn his fire-safety certificate, and when he was released at the end of his sentence. Joseph was proud of what he’d accomplished.

His joy soon turned to sorrow, however, when Joseph found out his mother had an aggressive form of cancer.

“My mom had her first chemo treatment the day I went to jail. Then my brother died of a sudden heart attack,” says Joseph. “When I came home, I had one month with mom before she lost her fight. I went into a dark spiral and started to get high again, not thinking about what could happen.”

It wasn’t long before Joseph joined the 62% of formerly incarcerated people who go back to prison, according to a 2022 study by the US Justice Department. But he knew it was possible to change and learn new skills, so Joseph used his time inside to improve himself and become stronger than ever.

“I wanted to get clean and stay clean,” Joseph says. “I liked the man I became inside when I was sober. I had principles. I exercised with discipline. I wanted all that, but on the outside. So I started soul searching.” This time, when Joseph was released, he checked into a treatment center near the beach with surf therapy, rock climbing, yoga, and meditation as a path to recovery.

Six months into his reentry, a friend referred him to the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) in Los Angeles, an organization that works to reduce recidivism and increase employment by providing immediate paid work, job placement, advanced skills training, and ongoing career support.

Joseph was assigned to a transitional work crew assisting CALTrans with neighborhood beautification. CEO gave him a job coach to work on his career goals, and he started to develop a plan to get back into what was becoming his passion – fighting fires.

“One day, a friend of mine who also fought fires but was in and out of jail, referred me to Fire Chief Bracy at the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program (FFRP),” says Joseph. “I knew right away that I had found my path.”

The FFRP provides career support to currently and formerly incarcerated firefighters in California. Fire Chief Bracy, the director of employment, has been with the non-profit for eight years and has seen over 300 justice-impacted people become firefighters through their program.

“Joseph Joseph was working for the Center for Employment Opportunities during the day and studying courses on wildfires at night,” Bracy says. “I mentored him and helped him search for jobs, just like I was mentored by FFRP when I got out 11 years ago.”

Although Joseph didn’t officially go through the FFRP program, the fire chief had worked with CEO in the past and believes in firefighting as a means to rehabilitation. “Nobody in prison wants to do manual labor…they want a second chance to learn a skill or get educated in some way,” says Bracy. “Many people, like Joseph, want to give back to their community.”

Joseph joined the waiting list to work for CAL FIRE and the US Forestry Department, but ultimately decided to travel 400 miles north to Chino to train at Firestorm, a fair chance company where he works for today.

“Firestorm told me that I needed a tent, a sub-zero sleeping bag, and $250 for the course,” Joseph says. “I didn’t have any of that, so CEO bought my equipment and paid my course tuition. Without their help, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”

He adds that CEO gave him the moral and financial support that many need to transition successfully from prison to a career. “They believed in me and really wanted to see me succeed, and that is a rare thing to find, especially if you’ve made mistakes in the past,” Joseph says.

Joseph used his last paycheck to buy an old truck and drove north to the Firestorm camp; with no income, he slept in his truck in the parking lot of a local church while taking written tests and doing physical training during the day.

After a years-long journey fraught with pain, sadness, incarceration, addiction, hope, kindness, and remorse, Joseph emerged from the two-month training as a Type 2 Initial Attack Firefighter, ready to serve and grateful for a fair chance.

“I was at Firestorm when the wildfires started in Los Angeles,” says Joseph. “My crew drove down and joined the first responders on the frontlines, working 24-hour shifts and then sleeping on cots at the Rose Bowl Center with hundreds of volunteers from the FBI, law enforcement, and other fire companies.”

Crew 6 stayed and fought the fires for 13 days before switching out with fresh legs; during that time, Joseph battled tornado-like winds and burning forests, surrounded by residents with mixed emotions who cried over their lost belongings and rejoiced at being alive.

The wildfires would become the most destructive blaze in California history, claiming at least 28 lives and destroying more than 16,000 structures in over a month’s time. But not many Californians knew that working beside those brave firefighters was a group of people deemed less than worthy, who had been stigmatized and ostracized from the same communities they were saving that day.

“The community members treated us like heroes. I had never experienced that kind of gratitude before,” says Joseph. “But I often wondered how people would react when finding out that I had been locked up…would they look down on me, or would it start a conversation about equality for all people?”

Still participating in CEO programs and three years clean and sober, Joseph recounts the moment when a young boy walked up to him with soot on his face and handed him a crayon drawing of a fireman with a cape on.

“It brought me to tears,” says Joseph of the encounter. “I never thought that I could be a firefighter, and now I've got 10 fires under my belt,, and I’m living a life beyond my wildest dreams.”

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