She's not just a rookie.
She's the only female firefighter in the department.
But 27-year-old Stephanie Pribble has worked really hard to earn her spot.
"I'm the last to sit down and the first to stand up," she joked. "And I'm okay with that. It's where I want to be."
Getting here wasn't easy. It took Stephanie three years to pass the physical tests to become a Cleburne firefighter.
"It tells me Stephanie is unique," said Cleburne's Fire Chief, Clint Ishmael. "Our standard is higher because we have an expectation here for physical fitness and ability."
"It says that I'm hard headed," Stephanie added. "I ran a lot. I started lifting weights."
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
Stephanie refused to give up, because others did the same for her.
It was her first encounter with a first responder that opened her eyes to a career in fighting fires.
"I was in a bad relationship. Wrong place, wrong time, and it went bad," she recalled. "I was scared to death and I didn't know what was happening. I begged that paramedic to hold my hand and she wouldn't do it. She was busy trying to start IV's."
That chance meeting changed Stephanie's life.
"That's something that stuck with me," she said. "The guys I work with don't know. They have no idea. I just come in and do my job."
Now Stephanie is helping others too, in her own way.
"I hold everybody's hand," she said. "I definitely feel like I'm supposed to be here. I didn't want to just be a firefighter. I wanted to be a Cleburne firefighter."
