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- [00:01]
Anna Sussman
Wondry subscribers can binge all episodes of Fire Escape early and ad free right now. Join Wondry in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
- [00:11]
Amika
Wondry.
- [00:19]
Anna Sussman
Snap Studio. Amika was sitting in the captain's office. She'd only been at the prison firehouse for a few months, and she'd already gotten reprimanded once. She was on very thin ice. If she got caught doing anything out of pocket again, she'd be sent back inside prison. The two fire captains looked at her and told her they'd been carefully watching her, and they said she was getting promoted to the top position at the firehouse. Engineer.
- [01:08]
Firefighter 1
We knew that she had a medical background, and anytime that we have somebody that comes out here with a medical background is very helpful. So, yeah, she was very good. All that stuff, all medical stuff, not just being a midwife delivering babies, but she was just bright. And it's a leadership role here in the house for the other inmates.
- [01:30]
Firefighter 2
You know, I was honored to be in that position. And it also shifted. I felt very responsible and it felt important to me, and I didn't want to mess it up.
- [01:41]
Anna Sussman
As engineer, Amica now held the lives of the crew in her hands.
- [01:46]
Amika
You had to be really good at kind of learning about the incoming calls, catching what they said, because you have to be writing it down. That's my job, is to write down the incoming call and where we're going and then navigating. And then the other thing that I had to learn is how to do all the controls on the control panels on the fire engine because I was in charge of the water and the pressure and getting the girls what they needed and basically directing the whole fire scene. You're watching for any kind of approaching danger or any risk that your crew is in.
- [02:20]
Anna Sussman
She had to know every dialogue, every hose attachment, every protocol perfectly.
- [02:25]
Firefighter 2
It was a big jump, you know, from being like a baby firefighter just barely learning to now running a crew. I had this big level of responsibility because if anything goes wrong, they look to you as to why it went wrong.
- [02:43]
Anna Sussman
From Wondry and Snap Studios at kqed, I'm Anna Sussman, and this is Fire Escape, the story of a woman whose world burned down. And then she learned to fight fire from behind bars. This is episode four, Reckoning. This episode is brought to you by Audible, your premier destination for audiobooks and exclusive content. Whether you're seeking inspiration, knowledge or entertainment, Audible has something for every listener. New members can try audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com fire or text fire to 500. 500. As engineer, Amiko was training all day. When she wasn't training, she was working out and she'd be sent out on multiple calls most days.
- [03:28]
Firefighter 2
Yeah, there's actually another call that I never talked about that is pretty big.
- [03:34]
Anna Sussman
The call came in at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and that timing would be important. The speaker mounted on the walls of the prison firehouse went off, and Amika and the other firefighters dropped what they were doing, jumped into their boots and hopped on the truck. They rolled out of the prison, and as Engineer Amica navigated them to the scene.
- [03:57]
Firefighter 2
It was a back road, and we arrived at the call and could see a car on the side of the road that had smashed into, like, a utility, a wooden utility pole. The airbag had been deployed and you could tell that, no, there was somebody in the car and nobody moving. Right. So we pull up behind the vehicle, jump out.
- [04:28]
Anna Sussman
And right away they can see that the driver, the only person in the car, has died. She's leaned over the airbag. Amica tells the other firefighters that they have to wait for the coroner to arrive before they can do much. So they stand there in their gear in the hot sun.
- [04:47]
Firefighter 2
It's like in the middle of kind of, I would say, fields or something. There's like, her personal belongings around. And so we're kind of trying to, like, look and see if we could see who she is. And the most vivid memory is the heat, the smell, and the flies. It was this hot day, you know, like, we're trying to, like, get the flies off of her. And, you know, it didn't do much good. And it's always strange to, like, be looking at somebody that is not there anymore and, like, trying to determine if their spirit is there or if it's gone and kind of like navigating, like, dealing with a body. So it's in the afternoon, it's like 3:00, school pickup time. And so we see the school bus approaching, like, from down the road because it's a country road, so we could see it a ways coming. And we hadn't draped the car yet.
- [05:51]
Anna Sussman
Draping the car means pinning up these big yellow sheets around the scene of the accident so passersby don't see something traumatizing and also to protect the dignity of the dead inside. But this school bus was approaching down the highway and they realized they hadn't draped the car yet. The scene was still totally exposed.
- [06:13]
Firefighter 2
It was like, oh, God, like, what if she has the baby on that bus? Can you imagine, like, these children rolling by and somebody recognizing a car that belonged to their mom.
- [06:26]
Anna Sussman
So Amika and the firefighters scrambled to quickly get the yellow sheets over the car. And they finished just as the school bus was approaching.
- [06:35]
Firefighter 2
The school bus rolls by. The kids have their little hands and faces plastered to the window because everybody's looking out to see what just happened. They see the fire truck and the lights, and they see a vehicle run into a pool. And, yeah, that vision is vivid and clear. I don't think I'll ever forget that. Like slow motion, slow motion.
- [07:00]
Anna Sussman
When the coroner came, Amika and her team began the work of extracting the woman from the car.
- [07:06]
Firefighter 2
Just excruciating. It was so hot, and we were in our full gear, you know, and so I remember pulling her. She was very heavy.
- [07:18]
Anna Sussman
The firefighters gathered around quietly.
- [07:24]
Firefighter 2
That was always something that was really beautiful to me about our crew, was there was always something that was a little. We approach things just a little bit differently than the men, and I think we're able to hold space a little bit more for just the presence of death and what that meant to all of us.
- [07:45]
Anna Sussman
When the coroner got to work, the fire crew was dismissed. They drove back to the station, and when they got there, they cleaned themselves up and washed down the truck. And a few days later, a firefighter named Frankie came in. Frankie was from a nearby firehouse and would come by a lot. Frankie said he'd learned that the child of the woman who died in that car was on the school bus and had seen the accident.
- [08:09]
Firefighter 2
We're all envisioning what it would be like for our own children to roll by and see her car, and then to have the news broken to that child that they lost their mom. And I'm grateful that we were able to cover the car and drape it before the baby would have seen mom like that.
- [08:33]
Anna Sussman
Amica. And the incarcerated responders at Station 5 almost never found out what happened to the people they treated, the people they pulled from cars or escorted out of fires. They'd be with them in those life and death moments, and then they drive back to the prison and, like, you.
- [08:50]
Amika
Feel deeply connected to someone and you have a job and you finish your job and you move on, right? I could love you up for in.
- [08:59]
Firefighter 2
That minute and then be gone. And, like, I remember my midwife saying that, too. Like, midwives are fickle lovers. Like, we love you, and then we leave.
- [09:10]
Anna Sussman
And then something almost unheard of happened. About 30 days later.
- [09:17]
Firefighter 2
We are at another car accident, early morning car accident with a Father and his two children.
- [09:26]
Anna Sussman
It wasn't a terrible accident. Everyone was okay. They were just a little shaken up. So Amika took the kids and brought them over to the fire truck and.
- [09:33]
Firefighter 2
Sat them down, checking in, keeping them.
- [09:36]
Amika
Calm, keeping them comfortable. We would keep, like, little tiny bears in the truck to give to kids and things like that, if, you know, just to keep them calm and warm and safe.
- [09:46]
Firefighter 2
And then. So I'm comforting the kids on this call, and one of the babies starts crying and is like, my mom is gone. I was like, oh. And then it all starts connecting those children. That was their mom. So 30 days before, the dad explained.
- [10:07]
Anna Sussman
That these were the children of the woman whose body Amika had covered up in the car, the children who passed by on the school bus.
- [10:16]
Amika
We had tended to this little one's mama, and we did that with, like, a lot of tenderness and grace. It was a really sad car accident. And then to be down the road, you know, like the arms of a child that's with you that doesn't have their mama anymore, and you're connecting at all.
- [10:38]
Firefighter 2
It felt like there was this spiritual.
- [10:41]
Amika
Beautiful thing that happened, right?
- [10:45]
Firefighter 2
I just.
- [10:46]
Amika
I felt right and I felt heartbroken all at the same time because it was painful and horrific, and the moments are fleeting. And any time we get to connect and just be there for each other as humans, like, that's a blessing. And I got to be me for that moment. I got to be loving and kind and nurturing and warm, and I got to be all the things that I wasn't anymore. When I was in prison or away from my own kids.
- [11:31]
Anna Sussman
Figuring out how to be a mother to her own kids seemed almost impossible. Sometimes she'd find herself just staring at the payphone or avoiding it altogether, she said. Even more than the ongoing humiliation by guards or being punished arbitrarily, it was moments of trying to connect to home that were the hardest.
- [11:50]
Firefighter 2
It was the moments when my papa would be telling me about what happened with my kids, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. Sometimes you don't even want to call home because it's just. That's too much, you know?
- [12:05]
Anna Sussman
She knew that she was missing milestones, and that year after year, she was missing their lives. Like, one time, it was her youngest daughter's birthday, Blossom and Amika called home to wish her a happy birthday.
- [12:17]
Firefighter 2
And they had scheduled a birthday party for her. And so, you know, she had been excited telling me about this party. She really hadn't had a party forever.
- [12:32]
Blossom
I was excited to have my little birthday party, and it was gonna be like a sleepover. Do little games, you know, have a summer party.
- [12:42]
Anna Sussman
Blossom was six years old when Emika went to prison. Now she's grown.
- [12:47]
Blossom
I remember loving to play that game where you put the donut on the string and you have to eat it. Yeah, eat it with no hand.
- [12:57]
Firefighter 2
She never. My daughter was, like, super introverted and kind of. She just. We were so connected. That baby was by my side all the time. I mean, she never knew a day away from me. She was, like, literally connected to me at all times. And so when I got locked up, she wouldn't let anybody hug her. She just wouldn't allow folks to connect with her. And so it was kind of a big deal that she had connected with some friends even. Cause she. Even with her peers and, you know, kids her age, she just was very distant. And so it was a big deal that she had connected with these other kids at school.
- [13:43]
Blossom
I went to school with a, like, pretty, bougie white. You know, like, nobody else's mom was in prison.
- [13:54]
Firefighter 2
One of the parents found out that I was incarcerated and found out about my crime and shared that with the other parents. And so, you know, the kids that were coming to her birthday party, they weren't allowed to come.
- [14:11]
Blossom
And I remember being so mad. So mad.
- [14:17]
Anna Sussman
She wasn't mad at her mom. She said she was mad that other people had the chance to make her feel less than.
- [14:23]
Blossom
Because this was my norm. My mom being locked up. That was my norm, is that she wasn't in my life and she wasn't. She was away.
- [14:32]
Firefighter 2
You know, my daughter wore this coat around of, like, the girl whose mom was locked up. It was just like, what have I done? I think that that was a moment for me that I, you know, just wearing the shame of what I'd done to my kids was really, really present. I think it was a huge moment for me of, like, needing to remind my kids about who I was.
- [15:05]
Blossom
I remember being pretty little, and no one really talked to me about it. I actually looked it up. I googled it. It was tragic. I remember in the articles, like, his family was just so sad. I don't know what to think about that. Because my mom, from there, from this point of view, it's like this menace, crystal meth addiction, you know, like, gets in car crash and a man dies. Like, I see it from that side, but also it's like, oh, that's my mom. Honestly, it was. It's really hard for me even now to even relate that to my mom. And I loved getting letters from her, and I loved her. And she was always. It was different than anybody else. You know, it's your mom.
- [16:11]
Firefighter 2
It's like how to just like reconcile this identity of who I was, like this good person in their life for a long time. And now I'm like this fucked up, you know, person with this stripe. It would take me a long time and a number of calls of, you know, responding to these car accidents at the firehouse before all of it started to kind of digest. And the impact of what I had done really sat with me. And I would see it each accident.
- [17:02]
Anna Sussman
Amika arrived at a cornfield. It was covered in mist and smoke, and the sun was just coming up.
- [17:11]
Amika
As the fire truck pulled up, we.
- [17:14]
Firefighter 2
Could see it was a really bad accident.
- [17:15]
Amika
I mean, you could tell that there was kind of the beginning of the corn plows were just kind of wiped out. And we saw an overturned vehicle. And then we saw folks coming out of the beginning of the cornfield. And that was the vision of that call that I'll remember because they were covered in blood and also covered in dust from the fields.
- [17:44]
Anna Sussman
The car had been headed to a party.
- [17:46]
Amika
So as we're walking towards the car, it's kind of the spiky, broken, you know, pieces of the cornfield.
- [17:55]
Anna Sussman
The car had flipped over and one of the passengers had been thrown from the vehicle. Amica rushed to check on the driver, who was still in the upside down car.
- [18:05]
Amika
And, you know, I do remember, like, kneeling down in kind of this. What was now muddy dirt, just kind of checking vitals and, you know, kind of assessing injuries that he had. Going to be okay. We're getting you out of here. You're going to be good. You're going to be good. You're all right.
- [18:25]
Anna Sussman
And while she was talking to the driver and holding him still, a helicopter came and landed in the corn. It was loading up the passenger who'd been ejected from the car. And it was clear to Amica that that passenger wasn't going to make it. So she held the driver's head in her hands and she smelled alcohol.
- [18:49]
Firefighter 2
But I just was thinking, like, that's it. He's gone too. He's gone. Like his life's over too, because he's going away. Like, he's going away for life, right? Because they are all drinking. And it was this car full of people partying together. And it was like a boys and girls, and they were like, girls were sitting in the boys lap in the back. And then, you know, but just having this feeling of like, he's gone too, he's gone.
- [19:16]
Amika
Not only are his friends injured and one friend turns out to be dead, but that this man is about to head to prison. I was more and more aware of the harm I had done with like a split second action.
- [19:33]
Anna Sussman
A lot of firefighters at Station 5 were incarcerated on DUI related charges. Jody Veerse was one of the firefighters on Amiga's crew, and she was also locked up because of a car accident. She had actually been a firefighter before she was sent to prison too.
- [19:50]
Jody Veerse
So one of the hardest things about being an incarcerated first responder for me was reliving my crash from another perspective.
- [20:04]
Anna Sussman
After Jody got out, we were talking one time she had her baby on her lap, and she described to me pulling up at the scene of an accident with two girls who had been killed by a man driving a truck, and how she felt she needed to volunteer to remove their bodies.
- [20:21]
Jody Veerse
I just. Something deep inside me just really needed, really needed to do that. But I remember just looking at that man and feeling equally for him, knowing that he was probably a good person that made a bad mistake. And the cops were there, the firefighters were there, everyone, all the first responders were there. You know, they were talking about this person, about what a piece of pos he was, you know, And I mean, I agreed with them and I felt myself to be the same and. But yet I had this just huge empathy for him too. Like, he didn't go out that day intending to end someone's life.
- [21:08]
Anna Sussman
When Jody got back to the station, she found Amika.
- [21:11]
Jody Veerse
She had a lot of love to give to everyone, but she made you feel very, very special and important. Just. That's part of her motherly instinct. Her. Her just intuitive love that she gives out and projects to the world. She was a midwife to the girls. She was a midwife to us. I mean, she's just. She would just be with you and make you feel okay without even really saying a whole lot.
- [21:46]
Amika
I knew that Jody and I had similar trauma and I knew how traumatic.
- [21:54]
Firefighter 2
Those first calls are. They're really hard to process.
- [21:58]
Amika
It brings up all your own shit, like. And I was a go to for.
- [22:06]
Firefighter 2
Jodi because she could relate.
- [22:08]
Amika
She knew I could relate to her.
- [22:14]
Anna Sussman
Jody said Amika would talk to her about what it meant to forgive herself.
- [22:19]
Jody Veerse
Just accepting, accepting yourself. And she's a very forgiving and just grounded person. And so she really, you know, gave a lot of self love back to me.
- [22:34]
Anna Sussman
But of course, working on her own self love her own forgiveness was harder. The accident she caused would creep up.
- [22:42]
Firefighter 2
On her, you know. Cause I heard about the man that I had killed. But I never. I don't remember those moments. And I don't. Like, it was a story told to me after the fact. It was this surrealness to it. Like it just was so hard to believe. All it was was a picture to me of a body.
- [23:08]
Anna Sussman
Can I ask, does that. Did your relationship to the grief go through different stages or evolve?
- [23:19]
Amika
It did. It really shifted for me over the years. Initially it was a lot of shock and grief and a lot of pain, physical pain that I would feel in my heart, in my chest, in my body. And it evolved for me over the years. It was like there was different stages of it. It doesn't hurt in the same way that it used to. And I've had to do through each one of those stages. I have had to work on my own healing and figuring out what that means.
- [24:06]
Anna Sussman
Can I ask you a hard question? When you talk about your healing, when you make that turn in talking about grief for the loss of this man and talk about your own healing, I am worried. It makes me nervous that people will be hostile or frustrated with those two things in the same sentence.
- [24:33]
Amika
Yeah, I totally understand that. And what I can say to that is that like I'm no good to the world if I am not working on my own healing. The reason I got to that place in the first place, the reason I caused this harm, the reason I landed in prison and the reason that most people land there is because we have a lot of trauma and shit we haven't worked through and we've harmed other people. Right. And I know that these people that want me to stay stuck in the pain and the grief and not move forward, like I really don't believe that. Even though that's like a knee jerk reaction from folks. Right?
- [25:26]
Anna Sussman
Is it a reaction that you feel from the world?
- [25:28]
Amika
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think that's really clear. Like it's really clear in the way that folks look at folks that are criminalized or have done time or caused harm, that we are now these non deserving folks that are not that. Like our own healing and growth and survival and even joy. Like those are things that we should not be able to experience anymore. That we shouldn't be able to move on from the greatest harm that we've ever committed in our life. But I disagree with that. Like, I believe that we are responsible to heal ourselves because the healing is a ripple effect. And all I can Say is that it's actually like, it's my own taking responsibility for what happened and taking accountability. I am not going to fit inside a box that somebody else wants me to. Right. Because it's complex. Like moving through your whole life with a harm that you have committed that you can't fix for anybody else. Like, the only thing that I can do is work on what I give to the world. Right. Which is moving in love and integrity. Like, those are my types of commitments to the world, to his family and to my children. And I know it's not enough.
- [27:02]
Anna Sussman
But even though they felt so much hesitance toward anything that might look like moving on, Amika and the women inside would find little ways year after year to allow themselves happiness, to find joy.
- [27:23]
Amika
Christmas at the firehouse was like, a little more kind of traditionally like Christmas, maybe you would have at home. And they had a fake tree that they brought out, and it was right in the middle of our kitchen living area. And we got to decorate the tree. We'd get a turkey once in a while, not from a state turkey, but like, you know, a store bought turkey.
- [27:47]
Firefighter 2
We had lights up outside the firehouse too, which was so cool.
- [27:50]
Amika
Like, we just loved that. I loved seeing the Christmas lights, like, on the window that framed the firehouse. And then riding in the truck at Christmas time was also super dope because we got to go see Christmas lights and, you know, things we hadn't seen for years. We loved that because it was kind of. It was novel. We were all beef, just full of smiles. It made your heart feel some type of way, just kind of remembering what.
- [28:18]
Firefighter 2
The outside world looks like.
- [28:20]
Amika
During the holidays. We were getting a taste of something that we couldn't quite touch, but we were getting a taste.
- [28:30]
Firefighter 2
And then at the holidays, they would also do a crew picture and let us send them home to our families. I remember my girls just freaking out like, mom, we had like Santa hats on.
- [28:42]
Anna Sussman
Do you remember sending the first one home to?
- [28:44]
Amika
Yeah.
- [28:45]
Anna Sussman
What do you remember about it?
- [28:46]
Firefighter 2
I remember calling home and just my daughter just like, laughing like, mom, you're the cutest firefighter I've ever seen. You're so little, but, like, you're so big.
- [28:58]
Blossom
I never saw my mom like that, you know, Like, I knew that she was a firefighter. I knew she did this and did that, and she lived in the firehouse, but, like, I never saw her geared up or, like in action.
- [29:12]
Amika
Oh, she's a real firefighter.
- [29:15]
Firefighter 2
It's not just like she's playing firefighter in prison or Something. It was legit. Like, mom's a firefighter, and she's next to the truck.
- [29:26]
Blossom
Before, I would tell people that she lived out of state or she lived out of town. But then when she was a firefighter, I got to be like, my mom's a firefighter in Chowchilla.
- [29:40]
Amika
I mean, they were proud of me. You know, they were proud of me.
- [29:53]
Anna Sussman
On Christmas Eve, typically, the firefighters would open presents sent to them by women on the outside. But this one Christmas Eve, they got called to a house fire.
- [30:04]
Firefighter 2
When we roll up to the scene, there's smoke pouring out of the top of the house, and we can see that the back portion's on fire. So then we, you know, get our.
- [30:15]
Amika
Hoses out to the back.
- [30:17]
Firefighter 2
We start figuring out, like, a plan of attack for the fire. We always do a check to see if anybody's in the house during the fire. And so, you know, we knew there was nobody there.
- [30:31]
Amika
It was really smoky. Like, when you have a fire that hits a roof, like, the whole house will be smoked out. Like, you can't actually. It doesn't really just stick to the one area where there's fire. I mean, the smoke kind of spreads throughout, and you can kind of see that. So a house fire is a combination of every of the worst smells that you can imagine.
- [30:56]
Firefighter 2
So it's like, it smells like electric fire, but it also smells like heavy.
- [31:01]
Amika
Wood and foam and material. So it just smells very toxic.
- [31:09]
Anna Sussman
There was another fire crew on the scene when they got there, a civilian crew, and they were putting out the flames.
- [31:15]
Firefighter 2
And so they're working on the fire in the back, and you walk into the living room, and there's, you know, TV couches and their huge tree with all the gifts under the tree. And so we're like, oh, well, it's like, we gotta save Christmas for the kids. We're just thinking about the impact of the fact that the kids are gonna wake up and know that they don't. They're half of their house burned down on Christmas Eve. We had a chain going of us. It was this little chain.
- [32:01]
Anna Sussman
The firefighters lined up in the living room and out the front door to the lawn.
- [32:05]
Amika
We're tossing them, tossing them, tossing them. Long box and short box and small box and big. Probably toy something. I remember that it was really dark outside, even though we had the lights of the engine and things like that, but it was really dark.
- [32:22]
Firefighter 2
And we always had this level of, you know, we'd be on scene and be like, do they think we're going to steal from them. Do they think we're going to take their stuff or not? And then we actually got the tree out and the family photos, and I don't think we realized that it was a correctional officer's house until that was happening. The family rolled up and a CO steps out.
- [32:48]
Amika
So the CO that owns the house that we're working on pulls up and just the whole energy changes. I think that was when we realized whose house we were in. And it was like during that moment, we were in the line bringing those presents out and it was this like the look in his eyes was a look of, what the fuck are you doing?
- [33:19]
Anna Sussman
When the CO pulled up to his house on Christmas Eve and saw a bunch of incarcerated women removing gifts from his house, everything and everybody stopped. Follow Firescape on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining Wondry in the Wondry App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify or on Amazon Music with your prime membership.